bricslove's Reviews

Kokdu: Season of Deity (2023– )

8/10

13 October 2023

It seems to be the writing that's the problem. Among Kokdu and nine tailed and goblin and sht of this vein, I've found Kokdu to be the best.

Actors are very good. The stuff they have said about the FL is utter venom, in my opinion. Too much aegyo and disgustingly childish mannerisms that just don't suit the character? That's goblin's baby lover.

This show suffers from amateurish dialogues, sometimes they are too long or dragged out. But considering the uniqueness of the way a concept is discussed along the show, and the way actors act it out, such shortcomings become invisible.

The uniqueness has to do with the concept of conditioning: fate and freewill are discussed but alongside that, something even more important is examined: traces of things that are long gone. Things that you know mattered a lot to you once and you cannot even remember what. The trace itself becomes what matters. And in this specific case, that trace is the painful experience of yearning... Turning all existence into grudge for the one that has yearned since time immemorial. There's a valuable observation there and the epically poetic way with which how conditioning and what it means to a mortal, sapient being were conveyed... That alone was breathtaking.

This show has kind of grown on me after I finished it.

I think Kim Jung Hyun is an outstandingly talented actor (he sings a song BTW for the OST, he is great at it, he certainly puts his heart into it). There were moments where I'd thought his acting was a bit exaggerated, but then I tried to think about how else someone could act those lines and descriptions out and it was then that I realized there was a problem with the written material. They should have let the actors free and make suggestions for a more natural flow and expression. I feel the director might have been a bit strict too. Im So Hyang was a nice discovery for me and KJH, aka the king of adlibs, would have the whole show soar along with Cha Chung Hwa and Kim In Kwon, if a Mr Queen kind of chemistry could get built among all the main actors. I must say though, this show doesn't have issues with character development the way its ilk has.

Creative writing from a writer who has a long way to go when it comes to adapting things to the screen, especially for a romcom, seems to have been hindered in this one due to what I'm guessing was a lack of healthy back and forth with the director and the cast. Unfortunately, only such communication would create the environment best conducive to a wholesome show with all the parts fitting and in harmony.

Telling it like it really is... with the pharmaceutical companies and all... And a brief yet honest evaluation of capitalism in passing... That's what got this show low ratings from all these hypocrites.

There's no universe where this show could get a 6 something and yet the previously mentioned ones could score a lot more, except one where people are hypocrites.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

THE Producers (2015)

9/10

Not for the formula-dependent, vicariously self satisfaction seeking consumer

5 October 2023

The kind of person I described in the title is exactly the type to give a low rating to this show.

To me, the best though not the only indicator of a good show is this feeling you get early on that the staff, from the director to the script writer(s) to finally the cast have been on the same page and also on par in terms of their respective abilities and skills.

The people who came up with this show knew exactly what they had in their minds: what story they wanted to tell and how they wanted to tell it.

You have to have that down in the first place for there to be anything that cast is to understand.

There were two stories told in parallel and yet in touch with each other, often times through a third person's type of narration that blatantly drew that parallel and yet refrained from pedanticness.

What is love, what leads to it or how it starts, what kills it or feeds it, what it transforms into and the kinds of relationships that are just too complex for us to mold them into the tangibly limited contexts/worlds that words we try to represent them with allow us... are the questions that this show deals with as masterfully as a lighthearted show could while also uncovering some of the many layers of show business through the story of an agency as we peep into its bits through said agency's collaboration with the producers of a particular show on a popular national channel.

The inner workings of show business and variety shows have been successfully shown in this dramedy to an extent that's just the right amount for all of it to remain relevant and pertinent, with the aforesaid questions, never straying out of focus.

The story is realistic yet not boring. It doesn't impose, it asks and it explores. The direction is very skilled, the pacing is very nicely done, the actors are talented. The actors... they were simply breathtaking, including IU. They made their characters almost three dimensional.

Anyone who has a story to tell will not pander to the audience when all they ask for is another stupid romcom with 2D characters whose shoes they want to fill so much that they are not even properly developed or they are changed in design midshow just because the audience didn't like the story or the character for the kind of reasons that make you question their awareness as to its being someone else's work, art, and creative decision.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Welcome to Waikiki (2018–2019)

8/10

Laziness with the second season

23 September 2023

Great actors in the first season. Kim Jung Hyun, Ko Won Hee and the actor playing Doo Shik, plus of course, Lee Yi Kyung... It was so apparent how this cast just clicked with every episode.

Light hearted comedy with romance, where the emphasis is on family and friends, rather than moochy love. Great composition if you want your show to be a comedy or, at least, more than romance in my opinion.

Except for the arc with the Ukranian girl, there's nothing I've found offputting in the first season. I got second hand embarassed due to that arc. It would have made me cringe if I were Korean, to be frank. A lot. Then it would have made me cringe once again, if I were a man.

Also, some of the comedy scenes are too reminiscent of Modern Farmer, which is yet another great show more on the dramedy side. The writers are the same, IIRC. That's a bit lazy. But each are original enough in their own right so it's no biggie.

The characters, their development and the beautiful friendships, familial ties and romance make this show more than just a silly comedy. It's good. As I was watching them, I actually wanted to be in that universe, living in that guesthouse as their friend. This is kind of a benchmark for me in shows where, whatever the setting or the atmosphere, relationships are key.

It was also very creative with its "slapstick". In fact I don't agree that slaptick is what characterizes the comedy in this show. It's in fact situational comedy. Yeah, a sit-com. I think some reviewers said that only because our main characters can be total goofballs at times, and because there are a couple of scenes where the whole writing borders on stupid to create just for the sake of comedy (t-shirt over the head going on for far too long, for instance) . That, however, has nothing to do with where in fact the comedy arises from. It's mostly how oyr characters respond to their environment and what character flaws they have that creates the tension for comedy.

Helplessness is a good trigger for empathy and the writers sure have abused that one, with success, though.

About the second season... I've watched only 3 episodes yet. I should tell you that I've been having a hard time getting into Season 2. It's not as funny as the first season which would have been OK if they hadn't tried to ve funny. The writer might have been different in this one. I felt as if this totally different writer applied Joon Ki's character wrongly except the times he/she actually copied the first writer. Things just don't seem to sit well together and it's not because the new actors are bad at it. It really feels like the writing is bad. I don't expect them to repeat themselves. I do expect them to build on the first season in terms of Joon Ki's character, however, as well as the new story in the way it connects to the old story, and if there's going to ve any change in tone, I expect the writer to let the world come alive and let the story itself do it naturally. It's not a world creates from scratch, it's supposed to make sense why we see Joon Ki still trying hus chances with the guesthouse when his friends, who were like a family to him, are all gone. Even trying to make this explanation into a small story would have given the characters and the main story the follow the natural restrictions needed to do a seamless transition where situations would seem neirher forced, nor repeated.

At times the second season feels like a cheap copy if the first: make Joon Ki go gwenchana once for a nod, for instance, not do the whole nine yards. Do not force yet another story out of Rebecca. Do not get the landlady into the same situation with the new group of friends, do not get yet another girl like Soo Ah, to stay in the guesthouse because she has nowhere else to stay, and then make her predicament so similar to Soo Ah's. And do not get another girl to function as Chewbecca. Simply, do not emulate the same formula and conflicts as if it's Groundhog day. Build on the existing one!

A note on Kim Jung Hyun... Kim Jung Hyun is a very versatile actor whose golden microexpressions create this breeding ground for laughing matter. He enables his mates, that I'm sure of now, as I found Kim Seon Ho, who I guess was supposed to replace him -because the writers seem to have made the mistake of trying to emulate the first season as I said earlier- a bit bland in his expressions. He's fine as an actor but Kim Jung Hyun is at a separate league alrogether due to his creative interpretation of how his character, as defined by a script, would behave. There's little the best could do even when the script sucks really bad and actors are given little room to ease the character into a story but KJH goes the extra mile by reacting to the character of the actors he shares scenes with, which then makes it easier for the other actor to follow course. He has the interaction in mind as he acts. Mr Queen would have been nowhere near what it is despite Shin Hae Sun's genius and other actors, if Kim Jung Hyun hadn't accompanied her. Actors do indeed complement one another. Lee Yi Kyung wasn't as great with KSH because it seemed to me that KSH was content with doing his part.

I'm talking about putting in the effort to create chemistry and immersing oneself in the story and a particular moment in that story, and contributing to the creation of the vision of this story's universe where the other actors also become one with their characters and start to breathe in that universe. I don't think you have lots of actors to choose from once you set the bar so high with an actor like KJH. Especially if you get lazy with your writing and hope your actors to shoulder the burden of mitigating that with the chemistry they create. Either that or you just need someone more confident and with a propensity to be the set clown... Or you just write things better.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (2016–2017)

1/10

Blech except cinematography, disgusting, tries patience

29 August 2023

Warning: Spoilers

You should know beforehand: I dropped this one midway through the 2nd episode.

1) I've seen everyone praise the OST, even those on reddit expressing a blatant dislike for the show. Well, I was surprised because the soundtrack that I had had the misfortune to listen to was puke inducing material for me. I actually said outloud, while watching it with Mom, whether I was going to be exposed to this sht whenever the theme was love or whatever the frak the theme was.

2) The cinematography is to me the only thing redeeming about this moldy cheese wheel of a show.

3) The script. Boy, am I gonna run through this absolute horse manure that's rated 8+.

900+ year old god saving his bride while she's some freaking fetus in her Mom's womb, keeping an eye on her somehow as she grows up to get to her highschool and obliging all her summons of him just to jump around from shop to shop like an idiot doing aegyo (a 19 year old, they say, so you see: she has her highschool skirt but she's legally bangable, the writer wants to have it both ways)... Like this lettuce you plant in your garden to eat later when it matures. Ew. Rear it to wear it... on your pole, f yeah. (Don't get angry at me for saying this, I probably have OCD and a button of very visual realism stuck at ON, at my expense)

I couldn't take the self indulgence with which this POS was scripted and shot and the OST was screaming at me to just quit the f out of it, and so I did.

And I'm saying all this as someone who hadn't suffered a tenth as much while I watched the Bride of Habaek. I did suffer a bit from My Love From the Star.

--- skippable, just for comparison ----

Why? 1) The actress is playing a young adult 2) The actor playing the 2000+ year old god looks about the same age as the actress 3) They both display the behavior expected of their agesin real life, though 4) Above all that show is your typical romcom where the ML is a fossil just due to a say-so that's blurted out real fast a couple if times. The viewer is not distracted along the show by some sort of an uncle-niece, father-child dynamic. The water god is as immature as his bride, so the show is reneging on its premise to achieve light hearted comedy. In other words that show has cheated its own premise successfully to keep the audience disgust in check. And it doesn't take itself seriously.

I did cringe a bit with MLFTS, but the reedeming factor in that show was that the age gap dissonance was restricted to flashbacks, and the ML kept dying and resurrecting as someone else. So the ages don't really build up with him. It feels like it wasn't made to be taken seriously either.

--- skippable part over ---

This show, though... Geez, they must have thought they were shooting a masterpiece. It sometimes has the pacing of My Liberation Notes, but with nowhere near a mastery and intent. Watching paint aesthetically dry is what it is because contemplation is displayed without relevant content, and fails to set the mood. You are hung dry on justification for the silence and solemn demeanor, since the context falls short, as you watch this 900+ year old god who's seen absolutely everything and should have long been desensitized at least to every-day drama, get all human and vulnerable in his pondering for a good while for a couple of times. Just feels pretentious at this point. Because it takes itself so seriously, it doesn't leave room for you to make light of it.

The guy looks like a 30+ year old, BTW, and is perceived as that old by the characters in the show, while the girl is said to be a 19 year old but is seen to act like a 15 year old who wants to feel like a 12 year old, max. It's like a woman parodying a matroushka of kids at different ages. At this point, the acting becomes a problem. The script is bad because acting as scripted while trying to remain beliavable makes the dynamic between the leads creepy and acting of the FL is bad because she seems to have doubled down taking up the ridiculousness of the script a couple notches by childlike mannerisms in a highschool skirt with her almost 40ish husband material next to her.

Here is the thing. You cannot write a solemn and epic story with an immortal fossil as your main lead. Because you cannot realistically imagine what a 900 year old being would think, feel and course through their lives. You cannot put such a character into three dimensions without contradicting yourself. So if you're still going to create such a character, there's no other way than a comedy to make it make sense and have your viewership court you till the very end with no qualms. If you still want to go ahead and strive for a serious tone that feels authentic, however, then you need to create a context where the interactions of characters that are hundreds of years old dominate the setting, rather than have it saturated with nerve rackingly nylon mannerisms from a supposed baby bride whose role of bride is not even relevant to the story except for making it tragic for the sake of being tragic, and of course, except for suggesting in imagination what a man does with his bride in comparison to what he does with his bromancing buddies. In South Korea, many people still put off full intimacy until their wedding. Lol. Take that into account and understand the pathethic sht shows like this try to pull. At your peril. I should have said to make of it all what you will instead of painting the reader to an ocd carved corner, I suppose but it's late, I'm more tired than enraged by disappointment, so forgive me this mess and any inadvertent trespassing.

My impression, in short, is that there's no way they can erect a proper show upon the premise laid out in the first episode and characters portrayed. No story can come of this unscathed. It's just piss-poor in all respects, save cinematography. (As I said earlier, most think its soundtrack kicks arse, so take no heed to my wary anticipation that it must all suck if the first track sounds this abhorrent. I'm going to give the rest of the tracks a try myself. The praise for the scores is through the roof. )

I don't have the slightest hunch that the story that is to ensue would be of any depth. The scriptwriter and the actors have failed to put thought into their own show. My guess is that they have just relied on horny, fanatical teens, old and wet geezers, etc and their seemingly high budget for the show and its PR. Like the average Joe with rich parents shot a movie or something.

Skippable postnote:

I feel at ease, my conscience is at ease. I don't feel the slightest regret in tearing the show apart. I have even been lenient because my knowledge of the earlier works of one of the actors and why they were possibly cast actually adds to my subjective distaste irreversibly, as the career path taken reeks of the kind of opportunism that could only pertain to an irresponsible sleazebag who's made it into a sport to capitalize on the degeneracies borne of the many power differentials found to various degrees nearly in all societies and cultures. Pretends to challenge the norms, whereas all that's happened really is quite the opposite: pandering to tacitly conveyed hypocrisies, to what's prevalent: adaptation without any sweat. Like the sucky little fish found next to sharks, and to my chagrin, it makes perfect sense from a statistical viewpoint. Sorry for the cryptic talk, I just wanted to let you know that nothing's going to gnaw at my heart at night on account of this review.

For reference... My favorite kdramas are Beyond Evil, One Ordinary Day, the Reply series, My Liberation Notes, My Ahjussi, and for romcom +-sageuks Mr Queen, the Tale of Nokdu, the Crowned Clown, Because This Is My First Life, Modern Farmer. Hwarang for camaraderie and love for homeland. Some of these have great social commentaries, superb script and editing and the OST to many of them kill it, too. There are lots of shows that I haven't seen yet. I've seen about 30.

I may come back at a later time and edit this to get rid of the grammatical errors but I desperately need to have some sleep now.

0 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Spencer (2021)

4/10

lol, these people think they're still an empire

1 June 2023

(Disclaimer : This is not just about the movie but what the way it has been received tells me about those who have seen it, so be warned.)

And that is what's pathetic and crazy. The weirdest and most unique part of this otherwise crap movie for me is how it struck the chav country where it hurts. Doesn't matter if they portrayed Di right or wrong because nearly all movies with a claim to truth are darned dirty, ugly, shameless, patronizing propagandas that are full to the brim with lies which they spew one after another at your face, while feigning concern for humanity. I've watched stuff that made me gag and who the flying frack is Diana for me to be concerned about how she was portrayed?

The movie: mediocre, boring, one dimensional, without substance, and has the homo push in the end for a sec, but in the least annoying kind of way. ("you need shock, laughter, you need love" - that's something no one can debate, although no one cares about the poor woman who's just there to decorate the main character, geez this sort of stuff disgusts me in ways I cannot tell)

Nice cinematography, horror theme in soundtrack that I thought was well fitting and nice piano pieces at the right places, etc.

The only redeeming quality of the movie is its way, although still too diplomatic, of questioning the ability to preserve your sanity surrounded in a place ridden of self important jerks who think they excrete their stink in pink. Gets better when you know that their only relevance is their knee-deep existence in globalists' defrauding the system they had once built and shoved down the world's throat as bankster gangster leftovers of all monarchies (This is not pertinent to and thus went unsaid in the movie but there was this supposedly touchy "all we are is currency" talk by the queen which too was impertinent. If you're going to make your movie about Diana, you cannot really pose the "Us this really for the country?" question. If you posed it, however, and ended up in "face on banknote", then you're being a coward. Do the whole deal or shut up forever.)

But these people a.k.a some of the audience to whom the movie matters in a very, very pathetic way, think they're still an empire. Not only that but as the fond subjects of the empire, they also seem to be proud of what their monarchy stands for and its colonial past and the "democracy" it's been imposing on sovereign nations with its bastard child over the pond, leading the way.

So much so that they need a third wheel of it to be portrayed with "justice". What a nice way and place to waste those feelings of justice and easily believe in your own effort to restore it.

Ofc, then, such a third wheel would be called names by its deluded subjects if she or he is to stop holding all the bull in and start acting out, even if for personal reasons. Because if, in the global scale, what matters to you isn't who's in the right but your benefits on the side by proxy and your deludedly vicarious enjoyment of power wielded by people who have never represented you but themselves... If you're such a brownnosing sycophant of a slave in your mind yourself, then you will call the proper reaction to an action "pathetic", "spoiled" and who knows what else. That's how you stand having to look at your own face in the mirror. That's how you deny your own lack of power and the geographically decided chance factor that lets you be able to deny it.

This movie wouldn't have been so bad if it crammed up Stewart's portrayal of Di into half an hour max, along with the whole package which only digs ambience-deep at her personality by presenting a psychologically challenging setting that's exacerbated even more by the vagueness of the allusions to a personal past. It's very much lacking in substance, it doesn't stimulate your mirror neurons nearly enough to trigger your empathy.

If it could do that, though, then doing it without appealing to the audience's needs to identify with and root for the main character would have been the real challenge. An effort to do this would then claim the rest of the time the movie took to waste for a portrayal that's almost as relevant as a first impression and put it to good use, or they could have died trying, I don't know.

It's the director and the screenwriter's fault to make the main sctress look like the queen of try-hards. It's the story that is two dimensional and two dimensional stories don't offer actors enough material to work with so as to ease them into the shoes of the characters.

So the 3 stars are for cinematography, the scores and the question: Would you be able to live with such turds just to upkeep a charade and stay healthy?

0 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Archive 81 (2022)

3/10

Almost a ripoff of The Watcher in the Woods(1980)bloated with cult and idiotic spacetime spin

28 January 2022

Actors except for a few in the minor roles sucked. A lot.

Atmosphere was really captivating but then the chosen settings and he pacing rendered it dreary. (three stars only for this)

Theme score was so-so and is reminiscent of some tune that I feel was one of the.trademarks of whatever old thriller I am for some reason unable to currently call to mind somehow. It might be a false alarm but it just sounds so familiar.

The plot seems to be an adaptation of the Watcher in the Woods changed just enough to not be a ripoff.

What characterizes this one for me is the adjectives "worn out/cliche/tired" and "idiotic":

I am sure I watched some movie where supernatural beings were caught and trapped in tapes and recorders. Now that isn't worn out but it's few and far between enough that I cannot recall them either and a tape repairing archivist on the hunt for old cassettes bumping into obscure and intriguing content is actually a fantastic idea. So using an old theme with such a character almost refreshes it. However that alone does not suffice to redeem the whole thing.

Wormholes getting forged in dreams to bend spacetime is honestly idiotic and an oblivious dream-time-causality loop coupled with an oblivious interpretation of spacetime... I mean come on, why does every unimaginative miserable sod think they can cope out resorting to these two concepts without an inkling of what they are and hoping a mesh of the two with enough fallacies would make audience's brains quit and just surrender in awe against something that must be wonderful because they failed to understand it(because there was nothing to understand)?

A supernatural movie still has to make sense and be coherent in the environment that was built up for its plot to proceed. Why choose to be this supernatural and still want to squeeze some semblance of science in it?

This one is full of holes too. Just one that is worthy of mention: The demon ruling the other world was about to jump into the world that the character is in(the world as we know it) via tv screens and monitors, and was precluded from doing so when the protagonist smashed in all the screens in our view (lol in at least two ways at two separate stupidities up until here) and then in the episodes that follow it is said that the demon could only hop into this world by a portal that only witches that are bestowed with a key, the specific incantation book etc could open up and the key was missing all along. This is just one of the many instances that showcase the level of the lack of self-awareness with which the show was made.

This is just too ambitious for its own sake and could have been much matter if they tried to be good at one thing instead of halfassing everything.

Netflix is trying to churn out shows of all genres to answer everyone's taste and all they do is do it all half arsed except the propaganda department. Now, that, they do pretty well.

TV as we know it has died and we have to put up with these monopolies now.

7 out of 9 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

House of Cards (2013–2018)

3/10

Full of Sh-t, Lies, Propaganda

14 July 2021

TL;DR: Dumped mid-third season. The 3 stars are for production. Bland. Two dimensional, rigid, cliched, black and white world with seemingly more dimensional characters that are not supposedly b&w, leaves no room for viewer brain but deceptively feigns freedom to interpret. Too many subtle and sometimes outright nausea inducing propaganda concerning domestic and global politics. Psychopathy glorification.

I do not like shows that take me for a fool.

I do not like shows that try to shove down my throat glorified villains or a certain demographic as this or that.

I do not like being told what to think either by in your face lies or subtleties that create this matrix of fiction out of which my brain is expected to connect the dots as desired and expected.

I do not like an alternate universe ambitious in its creator's attempt to represent and even claim all reality, while borrowing nearly all its elements from a certain, long sponsored version of the many perceptions of said reality. Either stick with the facts or do something totally different. Do not fuse your projections with things that have never happened and then imply that they happened or are happening or will happen.

The psychopathy and opportunism running rampart in this big white house are, even, made light of by confinement in the few persons portrayed as dark tetrad atteibutes in the series, without acknowledging the machinations of a system geared and tweaked to breed, recruit and award these psychopaths.

The show is contentwise all talk and no action, which would have been fitting in a playwright's fictitious world where 3rd person's POV only appears in the form of set descriptions, and actions are gleaned from conversations or monologues. But this is not a play. This is a show, with digital technology and big budget at its diaposal, giving me the 3rd person POV as little as possible, while forcefeeding me perception. This is acceptable only if the work that is staged is indeed a play. The show has been often deemed Shakespearean due to its dark characters, intrigues etc but what made Shakespeare great wasn't a deliberate attempt to blur facts and reality through making minimal use of means. It was his ability convey a world through a solid plot and characters, all of which, despite the limitations of plays were presented to us independently of the writer's judgments. It's much more complicated with Shakespeare than black and white. I, as a reader, have never felt not free in my judgments of Shakespeare's characters or worlds. Now in stark contrast this show's been painting grey characters in a rigid, black and white world pecked into the viewer's head through this tech, budget, and very cliched, very subtly supremacistic and xenophobic, self-righteous and almost caricaturistically two dimensional understanding of the world, about things that are nowhere near being as clear cut as presented. Now I last read Shakespeare's works about twenty years ago and I might need to revisit it and check my impressions of it, but my point that the world painted in the HoC is a very bland, fakely not b/w stands.

There's another vomit inducing cliche in this show, which has been, I guess, a long time favorite tool of Hollywood.

Create superficially interesting characters and plant them into a nice canvas of cinematography, micromanage the way they carry themselves first, without really introducing their personality into the mix, get the audience, and then have the superficially likable characters do or say things about much bigger, more important issues that would sway the viewer's mind towards your views. Hacking the largely unassuming and uninitiated viewer brain before they even start to think about these matters. This is such a cliche that if executed efficiently, it can make a viewer root for a character who's killed hundreds of people because, I don't know, his buddy was murdered. When in a culture whose idea of a hero is someone with a free pass just because one pumped out the oxytocin for the character in the right time, it becomes too late to grow a spine.

This show is elusively specific in the things it's tried to achieve.

Dumped midst of the 3rd season.

3 out of 5 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Eden Lake (2008)

8/10

This is not a horror tale. This is real. Stone cold. Intends to disturb and for good reason.

9 August 2018

That reason being the movie's ability to call people out on their apathy and ignorance-is-bliss attitude.

Viewers are of different types. Some do not have fun watching certain movies, but they still value those movies. I am one of those viewers.

What viewers like me enjoy is that there is someone who is out there and as disturbed by the growing apathy in society as we are and by the fact that we haven't been doing much about it.

The following are masterfully shown in the movie sporadically or throughout:

-the apple does not fall far from the tree, sickness breeds sickness.

-needing a sense of belonging makes you vulnerable to sickness. caving in to peer pressure is also a very real problem. and most important of all,

-that this is a vicious circle unless enough people care about it

The psychopaths in this movie, unlike many horror-thrillers out there are by no means glamorized. If they were, then I could call this a sick movie but it is quite the opposite case.

Very good acting. K. Reilly is a late discovery for me. Younger actors who played the psychopathic kids and the assimilated psycho kiddos in the making... all did a fascinating job... unless they didn't have to act.

Food for thought for those who think this is one mean, mindless torture porn: Would you call Lord of the Flies a despicable, dehumanizing book? or Ciudade de Deus such a movie?

Also: what goes punished in the world and what doesn't?

2 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Book of Henry (2017)

7/10

"The triumph of the human spirit"

8 August 2018

Well the movie was no less a tale than those Watts's character writes. I love such tales. More a drama than a thriller, the level of genius of the elder son was a bit over the top... but this was more than its parts and overall a nice ride.

And I just love Naomi Watts. The kids' performances were good, too. And of course the bad wolf. But Watts... Great choice, just great.

I can go so far as to say this is a family flick.

Don't watch the movie and then rate it low just because it's not the unpredictable thriller riddled with self-defeating twist bombs that you were wanting to watch. Just try other movies because this movie is basically drama.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

All I See Is You (2016)

8/10

"We don't know who me is."- more a case of rediscovery inevitably gone bad than insecurity- and how not to cope with loss.

6 August 2018

Warning: Spoilers

First off, I don't see any problems with the pacing, the visuals, or the music in the movie. All were fine and in fact, although the ending felt a bit rushed, it was not just meaningful but also artistic without being pretentious.

I agree, however, with some of the reviewers that it more falls into the drama genre than thriller. I have a brief moment of disappointment with good flicks that are categorized wrong, but that's about it.

Now... My character analysis is somewhere between the spectrum of views from the reviewers.

The movie does not clearly hint at any possibility that Clarke's character specifically went out to find someone permanently vulnerable to marry, due to a handicap. When you extrapolate the characters into the past, perhaps some of the audience would say that is very likely. Understandably so, as there are many people who actually feel so insecure as to purposely marry totally dependent partners.

The problem in the movie is, though, Lively's character doesn't waste time to confirm her husband's fears, and denies it when confronted.

It would be only natural for her to change her looks following the operation- she had to see herself first to know what she wanted to look like.

That was not what troubled the husband. It could have been, in other cases, but the movie tells us that it is not.

What critically troubled the husband was that scene on the train that he kept replaying, closing up on his wife's face as she thought no one was watching.

Also the realizations: 1. she lied about the man in the park 2. she said she was pregnant, without knowing her husband was sterile.

Whereas he could confront her and file a divorce or give her a second chance, the husband hatched a wicked plan to have her blind self back, failing to accept the fact that newly gained eyesight would make one discover more about oneself and have preferences with things one had no way of deciding before. As Gina said: "we don't know who me is." This was the problem. The husband could only get to know this new wife as fast as she could get to know more of herself. This problem was not mutually shared, as the wife had understandably welcomed the changes with delight.

Said another way, changes happen faster than the husband is able to let sink in and upon realizing that he is losing his wife, he tries to reverse the process back to when he knows she would need him, therefore would keep him, as if he can make her unsee things, rewind time. So he tries to actually blind her. That is how mentally sick he has become.

As the wife is singing this song on stage from a time when she was blind and all she saw was him, and staring straight in his eyes all the time... there's this silent conversation via exchanges of gazes of how she used to love him, how she could still see and knew what he had been up to, and how he ruined it all. He gets the messages, walks out on her and jumps in his car, and, absorbed in a very emotionally intense session of self-introspection and judgment while driving, ends up in a fatal accident.

A life ends as a new one begins. Things move on, one way or another. If he had thought about it before the operation he could prepare and therefore grant himself "the serenity to accept the things he cannot change".

I loved almost everything about the movie without the need to root for either of these two characters who had become very realistically unlikable as the movie proceeded. I respect this in a movie. A cold but sincere little flick.

85 out of 103 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Acrimony (2018)

8/10

Immersive, and quite contrary to general opinion, believable

5 August 2018

Warning: Spoilers

This movie is not crazy at all. It perfectly displays the stages up until derangement of the mind of a person who used to have flaws but was normal. First person's point of view narration was spot-on to execute this. The movie does a good job of showing the audience the many sides of this relationship despite the fact that it was predominantly a 1st pov movie.

What pushes people over the edge might differ. Their different personalities factor in differently too and in this case the fiery personality of the antihero protagonist didn't help. In fact because there is no hero in this movie, there is no antihero either. The movie does not deal in black and white one dimensional characters.

So just because your edges are different, do not assume the story in the movie is irrelevant. You can look up many crime stories to confirm that this is so real.

As for its being a thriller. Thrillers do not have to be "unpredictable" all the time; they are however supposed to keep you tense and involved. Cinema audience are given to consumerism and instant gratification too much. The movie holds its own even if you can guess what's goimg to happen next up until the end. If you can still sit through to watch it in delight, then that movie is beyond its genre. In my case, it is obvious that I could.

Actors were good. I had no idea Taraji Henson was such a capable actress. Looking forward to seeing more of her movies where she gets the big part.

So. Give the mysteries of the human psyche a chance to make room for a variety of shoes to get into and walk in your own minds.

1 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

10x10 (2018)

7/10

Will have to disagree again. This is a believable movie.

4 August 2018

Warning: Spoilers

I should really thank the reviewers for lowering my expectations, and then myself for not caring about reviews or rather, for reading between their lines.

I am very content with this movie: story is good, atmosphere and music are used effectively. Few things are overdone.

Here is why this movie is realistic:

Yes, there are vigilante religious nuts who take it upon themselves to punish people.
Yes, "survivors" are made of selfishness and apathy. Kudos for that observation, that was fantastic. To survive, you have to adapt. To adapt, you have to accept the rules as they are. To accept is to maintain status quo, regardless of what it means for the masses.

It was a Darwinistic world eaons ago and still is, only because humans who draw a thick line between animals and themselves have failed to even want to better it. Surviving in a Darwinistic society tells a lot about you, or the Macchiavelli in you. Not talking about breathing here, obviously.

And just like a survivor does, a beast disguised in feigned innocence slowly unravels its ugly face. You get your hints though: The acting, the manipulation, the utter strength that comes from having no reservations.

The man's getting beaten a couple of times, was, to the contrary very realistic. How so? Well someone who is not accustomed to using violence on a daily basis is inclined to think others aren't, too. In other words, they are not cautious. Especially when they think they have the upper hand. It has nothing to do with your physical strength when you're taken down by surprise.

And because the man in question thinks he can reason with a survivor in some twisted, perceptibly life-threatening environment he put this survivor in, he is actually hoping for a change.

As stated in the movie, he didn't put her there to kill her. He put her there to judge her, force a confrontation, an admission of guilt. He put her there to see why she did what she did, and most of all, if she regrets it.

The captor was fooled into thinking the abductee had her own lines she couldn't cross. She had something human in her.

And in the end of the movie, where the real physical fight starts, we hear her letting the man know of this big mistake: "Did you think I would give it all up for you?"

Actors were in fact good. Scenes of realizations were shot well enough to feel immersive.

Predictability is of little value here. This is not a movie that challenges you to guess who will do what and who will win in the end. This is a psychological thriller movie where the biggest twist is the abrupt change in the transparency of personalities. Denial until the end, and then dropping the act to display one's true colors only when one thinks there is nothing more to be redeemed... is the true nature of a narcissistic suvivor that we all have in us to varying degrees. The build up of tension in the environment towards such breakdown was the perfect setting to render this transformation visible and in a striking manner.

The man carries a gun, but even during his knee-jerk reactions, he doesn't have in himself the selfish recklessness of this survivor of an inexorable woman who knows no bounds. That is why the fights were so realistic. The disbelief with which the man improvises was acted out perfectly by the actor. And same could be said of the actress as she transforms into a monster.

Both characters' actions and choices are wrong to different extents and you still can find yourself rooting for one over the other. That is because evolution made sure we have an inbuilt justice system which we call "conscience". It all sits well in this movie of a fight of altruism vs selfishnessness/sympathy vs apathy.

All this carried out without the torture porn, and still effectively to the point. There's some blood, and a violent scene of fight but I could cite countless movies held in high regard having much more violence in them than this one.

In short this movie is the portrayal of a sociopath versus a normal person going vigilante upon losing it when they yearn for actions to have consequences. Nowhere along the movie was I duped into thinking the movie was about something else. No feeling of being shortchanged.

And for those wondering why such movies are on the rise.My take is: Because we are in an era where we have seen laws selectively working for too long and we have pent up, toxic anger that we try to slowly get rid of our system by seeing a similar story told by someone else. It confirms our sense of justice and helps explain our anger, and draw lessons from what is actually a "simulation".

37 out of 63 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Loveless (2017)

10/10

"Mother" Russia: forget yourself to find yourself; from desperation to exhaustion to lovelessness and back to more desperation, a vicious circle force-stopped by loss.

4 August 2018

But is this the only way? Should this be the only way? (disclaimer: my reviews are mostly reviews of content. Especially with movies like this. To me, style is secondary to content.)

The inevitable becomes learned somewhere along the way. Desperate isolation becomes self-inflicted. No wonder this should happen soon after that very self gave up on watching. And no wonder the self gave up on it: It had taken for granted what was temporarily its. The self just watches, most of the time, without ever making a point of it. However only when you make a point of it will you be wary of the expectations you have forged and were not able to nourish. Life, love, the will and power to share... are not yours to keep. It is a garden that will perish in your hands, while you have been looking through it at elsewhere. Until of course, you start feeding it.

...

This movie was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. This is 10+more stars for me. Something else.

Although it's been months since I watched the movie, I am still overwhelmed by its honesty, sadness, silent SOS alarms, and beauty.

I had no problems marveling at the composition of scenes even as I was getting immersed in it more by the minute.

No abuse of emotions through soundtrack, which would be OK in other circumstances. Cold and bare, honest, as everything else in the movie.

There was a scene that this movie burned in my brain, a scene that I will never forget.

The way I see it, a fantasy science fiction movie can convey the real better than a skewed and biased account of history. Given that, the more real a movie, the more heartbreaking it is. And reality is not conveyed just by plot content. It is conveyed by how the plot is executed and the execution depends on the choices of the director and the screen writer, and being honest with these choices. Choices, in turn, depend on what push these people to write these lines and shoot these flicks. Their motivation to shoot that particular movie. That raw need.

The reality conveyed to me by the scenes in this move, some very very heartbreaking scenes, is that isolation does not feed mankind. This era, teaching us that selfish individualism is freedom and that we are solely responsible of what happens to us, encouraging us to make more superficial contact only to get instant approval at the cost of losing our touch and empathy and therefore sympathy, and passing all this off as "modern cultural values"... does not feed us. It is, in fact, killing us and it grooms us for this job first. We accept to be a part of it, thinking we have no other way.

What makes this movie special for me is this most sincere social commentary as made obvious by the choices of the makers of the movie as to what to dwell on. And that then dictates how long to use a scene, or a music piece, or silence, which angle to use, when to zoom in on a face and when to pan out. I was a case of success. The movie managed to talk to me. I can see what the director's been trying to say. Execution brought the content higher.

The whole story is also a breathtaking pun for the parallel course Russia's fate has taken in this era of destruction of social ties, exposure to transformation by degeneration, and the consequential losses.

A beautiful movie from a beutiful director, calling us to our senses, trying to shakes this barren earth of apathy off of us.

... So... No, this shouldn't always be so, it doesn't always have to come to this:

Lovelessness breeds more of itself and its ilk: think of a lexicon of words here. Do not, however, make the mistake of assuming you have none left to give.

Save it for the worthy, instead. Especially, all your children. Your and others' future. Force that mirror in your faces. It can only get better.

2 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Red Sparrow (2018)

2/10

Tired, shameless propaganda trying to blur concepts: choose few people over a whole nation because you made wrong decisions successively

4 August 2018

Warning: Spoilers

Under the pretext that you will be saving "red sparrow"s.

Who told Dominika to hit those low-lives of conspiring ballet couple in the head? Why not use the photos as evidence and go to the police?

Who told her to accept the job? Helping her mother, my a.. For your information, healthcare was free in Soviet Russia. That is exactly how this movie started to suck from the beginning.

So...

Watch t r e a s o n earn itself a rationale in this movie through arguments of individual retaliation, where millions of lives matter less than your own-or they selectively matter. Yeah. Hidden premises in sentences do not look so innocent when called out on and disclosed, do they?

One long line of disgusting slanders from Guantanamo bay psychopaths, A-bombers, secularism destroying sharia instators, goverment toppling freedom grabbing coup-de-tat engineers, who weren't the ones to stop the Nazis by the way, but instead shared a gas company with them. Europe creating Frankestein to unleash on the Soviets and failing, and the US profiting from all this every step of the way and projrcting on Russia since then. And the agent in the movie played by Edgerton talks about how they don't treat people that way... Oh wow. The nerve... Thankfully, there are many honest ex-CIA whistleblowers who don't opt for an easy made career by propagada via fiction novels.

I used to admire some of the actors who took part in this movie but lost some respect, I have to admit.

This movie is incredibly insulting to my brain and I am sick of decades-long major Holywood propaganda function.

2 out of 9 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

John Wick (2014)

4/10

Little blue pill of consumerism: Fun to watch but desensitizing; unethical

18 January 2018

I don't think this is much of a spoiler: That the the first person shooter video game scene in the movie does not just draw a parallel to what this movie is made of but also meant as a self-aware criticism of our era and what mindless consumption has been doing to us would be a tired attempt at copping out to defend hypocrisy.

That said the choreography, scenery and cinematography itself are so good that you cannot take your eyes off the movie. The tempo along with the captivating photography works like a drug. The choice and use of color in this movie was probably what immersed me in it the most.

There is this heartbreaking scene at the beginning that was hard for me to watch. As opposed to a horror flick, it was very real and traumatic. Tears welled up in my eyes.

I only advise you to watch this one if you are aware of and thus not vulnerable to this problem of desensitization.

I could have rated this higher and said the same thing but I feel that film makers (directors, writers and producers are all included) abuse their expertise and initiatives too much to boost the influence they have over their audience, selfishly denying any responsibility they should be having for others by opting to exploit their vulnerabilities such as the need to have good time, as there is little free time, or the need for instant gratification.

As delicious and harmful as a snack dipped in all the wrong things for a healthy body.

2 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

A Dark Song (2016)

5/10

Otherwise a great tale deprecated by boring fodder, botched story, wrong pacing

11 December 2017

It was promising at the start. It foreshadowed a journey which was squeezed in the last 5-10 minutes of the whole movie. Basically, the promise of a journey wasn't kept. What happened was: 1. It started building momentum slowly. 2. Then there was this revelation in the first half of the movie that led me to think things were going to take a turn. 3. Then it kept the slow momentum, where I was struck with the miserable realization that no ending could mitigate the time spent trying to make sense of the mindless sequences riddled with lots of needless distraction, little and irrelevant conversation, and music coupled with sound effects that served to slow things down rather than render atmospherically immersive scenes. 4. Then the journey through 5 realms were curtailed and compressed down to two corridors of pathetic demons, and other beings hereafter, and an incredulous scene of struggling to move along, never mind all the ditched references and potential arcs that could have added dimension to the story. 5. What followed was the best scene the movie had to offer: the sort of refreshing imagery which in itself was not creative but rarely used. You are finally offered a meaning, and maybe a nice one at that. You actually feel that coming -what she set out to do and ended up doing-, so when it comes, it does so with no surprise, which by the way, doesn't sully the intended outcome.

The movie has this tense, sad, almost grieving simple violin theme all along, regardless of when it matters. This causes an ongoing feeling of being shortchanged or let down.

The idea was good, the cinematography was fine, the music was also fine. What ruined this movie was the slow tempo addled with utter mess of a fodder. You can use both in a movie and still come up with something interesting enough, if not memorable. When you abuse both, however, it just doesn't work. It backfires, and what better indication of this than checking the time bar to see how long until it's over? This is spoiled milk and keeps you thinking how much better it could have been. It feels as if the writer and the director just did not care enough. A botched film with bloated short film material. See it at your peril.

4 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Expendables (2010)

1/10

Confessions of an Economic Hit-man, anyone?

10 December 2017

Shame on all these actors who participated in this abomination.

That the movie sucks is one thing... That the makers of this movie thought viewers can condone the movie content, watching the lovely CIA crack down on some Latin ""dictator", and to think this joke can still work at this age, where you have your whistle-blowers confessing to past crimes to make way for new potential ones with the new-found innocence that buys them time, to think this horse manure would pass undetected... is such an insult.

Have some respect for the world history before you venture into mindless, psychopathic, machismo buffoonery whitewashed with some perverted notion of heroism! The old Hollywood vomit, regurgitated once again into unsuspecting, innocent minds? Between the sheets, maybe. But not any longer. Go back to sucking oligarchs' balls and this time keep quiet already. Geez.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Chaos Class (1975)

This is strictly a Turkish film that only Turks will understand. Do not even consider watching this. I totally mean it when I say this isn't for you.

14 August 2017

You will be lost in translation. But that's not the real problem here. Even the thought of trying to explain why Turks love this so much gives me a headache. There is no way.

Brotherhood, solidarity, togetherness, family, collectivism, naivete... picture the poverty with which the movie was shot spilling over into the screen and we Turks loving even that and the mistakes, too. The exaggeration and the stupidity in it. The real thing in the surreal. The 3d soul projected from caricature like 2d characters. That cheesy music we love so much belonging to a Turkey that is now long gone. The kind face of Munir Ozkul - the teacher, the father, the poor, the honest.

These guys, many of the stars in the movie had often been typecast to the point that they felt like an additional member of your family. You can see Saban's character in many other movies, for instance. You can see Munir Ozkul acting the same character in some other movie, the only distinction being his different name. So when this movie is on TV, Turks know what these guys are all about.

Still there is some intangible aspect to the culture I cannot explain and I won't try to.

This is about Turkishness. That is now long gone. Our expats watch this stuff when they miss their homeland. So this is not for you and don't let its high rating deceive you. This is worth a high rating, but only from our pov, for reasons we just cannot explain. Just don't watch it. It will be a huge disappointment for you.

15 out of 23 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Confession of Murder (2012)

7/10

Sacrificing a big punch for successive slaps. A good, creative thriller nonetheless.

25 May 2017

This movie was a strange mix of cartoon-funny, thriller, noir and drama, all packed in an adventure.

There are some twists you don't see coming, and when they do, they come down pouring. Some may find them predictable but considering the pacing of the movie I do not deem most of them predictable, except the first one, and this is not actually good all because of timing. Since I do not intend to share any spoiler here, it will be hard for me to explain my point of view, but I will give it a try: The movie twist-bombs you during a single scene of confrontation up until which you had time to dwell on possibilities but wouldn't, in my case at least, because I was too busy savoring the rich performances, an already gruesome and captivating story, and even if I saw a twist coming and try to wrap my head around it, it was hard for me to let the next twist sink in amid all the empathy the story and some of the performances forced me to experience. The shockers in this movie are serious in content and this crowd of twists causes a desensitization in the viewer that doesn't let the whole thing sink in. Where there could be a punch, these are like successive little slaps in your face.

I find the cartoonishly unrealistic scenes in the movie to be a treat. It was nice to watch but it also had a function: it gave a glimpse of the new characters that were introduced, the way a caricature does.

The social commentary is where the perfectly executed noir steps in. A great satire to public perception of psychopathy and how it is engineered by media. Might give some insight to those clueless people out there who haven't yet realized how we transitioned from denouncing behavior that exudes lack of empathy to glamorizing it, condoning the criminals it breeds, because, you know as well as I do how much we are attracted to people in Wall Street as they speculate and kill our future with a single phone call because of all that sexy hair and slick outfit and their "intelligence". Well, there is no "high functioning" psycho in the movie, but the commentary nails it nonetheless.

It is the pacing of the later twists with respect to twist content that led me to give this one an 7. The punch vs slap thing, in other words.

It is a great thriller tainted with abundance of stuff at the cost of more important stuff. The actors in this movie did a great job and character development could have been much better had the script allowed room for it. Come to think of it, this movie should have been at least half an hour longer. As it is, it feels like they crammed it all in 1.5 hour so as not to cut it short.

If you are binge thriller watchers, watch this one. It is a nice Korean thriller by all means. If you look for more in a movie, then I think it is still worth to give a shot. My guess is that you will be both delighted and disappointed but you will be nowhere near "what did I just watch?". No. This one's better than that.

9 out of 11 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Baskin (2015)

4/10

Cheap and meaningless with a tired time loop cop-out

13 April 2017

Slasher gore fans who just want to watch red paint and egregious stuff might find this flick to be worthy of their time.

If you are one of those horror fans who want more in a movie though, than a tired collage of old horror cinema that goes nowhere and if you cannot watch a movie where actions do not have motivations, failing to dwell on human nature, in other words if you are the sort of audience who doesn't do anything for the sake of just doing it, ignore this movie.

To give you an idea: Carrie has reasons, Jigsaw has reasons, a vampire who will starve without blood has reasons. This movie is about people playing with eyeballs and uttering drivel hoping the gripping atmosphere in the movie will make them meaningful.

Using a real-life flawed person to depict a villain is a new low for me.

Positive sides: good michalengelo reference, yet very tired and doesn't sit well in the movie cause the symbolism is not about lucid dreaming and consciousness like this movie made it out to be. It could count as a Freudian symbolism, not with the hand of God though, lolz.

Gripping atmosphere at times. But you will recognize the stolen ideas.

6 out of 15 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Hunt (2012)

10/10

A beautiful Scandinavian movie about humans and their inevitably faulty nature.

6 January 2017

This one was a real treat. --- Beforhand: I am not a movie expert. Neither am I a native speaker of English. I may fail to keep it simple for keeping it simple demands a native speaker's skills and command, I believe. ---

Trivial stuff first: Great cinematography at times. Great choice of moments to zoom in or out, such that the directing alone tells more about characters than it could in less skillful hands. This makes the characters feel more real.

Nice little pieces of music. Always in tune with the movie's momentary mood, imo.

---

As for the performances, I found it to be convincing enough to stay focused. Never did I feel the movie was forcing itself on me.

---

Scenario: Great script, overall. I seldomly felt that certain scenes required a more detailed content so as to clarify the protagonist's intent in taking a certain course of action: How, for instance, was he so quick to choose to continue to be a part of this crowd who previously had been so quick to pass judgments so critical that it could destroy a human being's life for good? How could someone possibly hope to be a part of something that became irreparably tainted, something nowhere near "whole" the way it was used to be, something that was shattered so badly that nothing good could come out of it any longer? Maybe, it is my personal concern that I have sought an answer to this. It is just as likely my concern that the only answer I could find is that a sincere hope to uncook a cooked egg is not so rare a psychological response of the common human mind as we hope it to be even when followed by an experience that frequently leads to a common appreciation of a negative relation between rationale and disappointment. Said another way, no matter how useless we know it is, we cannot help hoping for the impossible to happen.

---

Oh - great symbolism by the way. Not a unique one, but great all the same and what underlies its success is its ability to showcase a table-turning experience only to make a general statement rather than a case-specific one. Let me clarify a bit: The tables can turn for anyone, at any time and not necessarily in accordance with what some choose to call karma: because, yes, life is not fair, the world is not a fair place, it has never been one and we can acknowledge this fact yet still abhor it. Refraining from being part of any game will not absolve you off this universal rule, there is only one way from there on, and that is downhill.

If I am to let you in on what this movie is about, without giving away any spoilers as to the plot specifics, then I would say this movie has to do with an inclination to frame people (uninformedly) based on false accusations, sharing the guilt of these false accusations and becoming aware of it and the different ways in which people choose to cope with the shame that accompanies said awareness, thereby sealing the fate of the falsely accused: doubt "you rather than me", even if it means you will never be the same again because of my failure to be willing to pay the price - simply, my reluctance to atone.

The way the flick dwells on human nature and its tendencies as determined by its inadequacies wherein lies the inevitability of it all... is both depressing and relieving; the way confessions often are to a human being. It just cuts to the chase and makes us face up one of the main causes of insecurity: how we see things totally depends on where we stand, and where we stand might change in the blink of an eye, against our will. We are small, the world is large and, yes, although we like to pretend otherwise, the fact remains that we attribute too much of our content feelings to our free will and little to mere chance -those things we cannot control- but it is, indeed, the other way around.

5 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Palabras encadenadas (2003)

5/10

substance downplayed for shock value; something that's not good even for a thriller

1 January 2017

If "not seeing it coming" is your decisive criterion for which thriller to watch, then go ahead and watch it. Some say the twists were way too obvious whereas others say the twists were realistically smart. I, therefore, cannot tell what is in store for you.

If not, then carry on reading: I do not appreciate a movie that tries too hard to surprise and does that without a story. That keeps me asking "so what"? Personally, I didn't find the twists as realistic as some deem it to be, as realism, to me, has more to do with the tangibility of causes than the nature of effects.

Once I had realized the movie was all about twists rather than the story, I stopped caring about how the story told in flashbacks would unfold (because a partially hidden retrospection is what these movies are all about, most of the time).

So, there actually is a story, but the story pertains in the twists and I was expecting otherwise. It almost feels like the movie is saying to the viewer: "I want to surprise you so much that it is actually impossible for me to think of a captivating story with believable motives, see, a movie can only last this long and because I am filled up with twists, I cannot even build characters and back up my story, there is in fact no story even though it might seem otherwise, because there was no time to give you one." This is the single reason I rated this movie a 5. It is interesting enough to keep watching with an anticipation to see more of what is coming and then letting it all add up coherently, but, in the end, all I felt was that I didn't even care about what I had just seen. I couldn't find a single thing worthy of remembering in this movie.

Other than that... I liked the performances of the actors. I found the setting to be a little too nondescript for my taste; with nothing really sticking out in particular and setting a memorable atmosphere. Maybe I should have chopped more off the rating because of that.

2 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Drive (I) (2011)

Not for Everyone: A total appreciation of what a human being is.

10 September 2016

First off, I agree with all the people who reviewed the many aspects of this movie in a positive light: its narration-story-telling, cinematography, soundtrack and the way it is used in conjunction with its pink retro presentation (the beautiful 80s), the settings and character development (yes there is a character development, just not in the spell-it-out-for-you kind of way). I not only liked the movie a lot, I loved it.

My review will include an attempt to explain why there is no middle ground in ratings and there are either haters or lovers.

1. You need to connect to the character of this movie. 2. You need to recognize the body language of troubled, lost people and appreciate the different kinds of bonds that develop in a story led by such people. 3. You need to either have or have been led to "where it's dark and have no fear." and been changed by this exploration forever. You need to be willing to understand what dark is and why it is there at all.

So what makes a person love it because it is such a cool "art-house action flick" in comparison to what makes another hate it because it is so "low-paced", "dull", "pretentious", etc... It all depends on which side of the fence you are on and hence your ability to connect. If you don't even know and can't appreciate the fact that you have a dark side, how exactly will you be able to do that, connect, I mean? Is being an "Odyssey" -I kindly ask you to look up its meaning if you don't know what the word means-, whose slice of life we witness to, not dark enough in itself or is Anakin Skywalker as Darth Vader the epitome of polished, shiny darkness spoon-feeding you on who is bad and who isn't? Do we only connect to those who we wish to become or who leave us in awe because we don't have what they have? Like power?

See, that is the thing. This whole question of "who is bad?" is a giant illusion obscuring the more real and dreadful question of "what is bad and when?" For when we attempt to answer this question in all honesty, we find ourselves trapped in the confinement of our own illusion which is a permanent part of the self-images we started building early on from infancy up until now: we are good, others are bad. In actuality, it is the actions that are good or bad and none of us can be absolved of the awaiting feelings of shame and guilt following the self-image shattering discovery of "having belonged to/having been of the mundane". No special treatment? No VIP seat for ourselves in our own skin? Come on, give us a break. Or not.

This is the story of a nobody among all nobodies, a nobody whose idiopathic detachment from world becomes the source of his disenchantment with it. We don't need to know why it happened. We are presented the information that it just happened. Character development isn't all about prior knowledge. It's also about the "now", as a result of all that once was "now".

The director makes us stalk the character, peep into his life for a brief time. He doesn't talk with his mouth all that much yes, he rather does it with his eyes and body (Gosling totally nailed it). We are not told why he puts himself through these ordeals that in fact other people need to overcome: So then, we are asked to understand or interpret it ourselves.

Some people treated this movie like sht just because they couldn't understand why a man would leave some million bucks in the trunk of a car and maybe bleed to his oblivion. This is as idiotic as assuming those things we don't understand couldn't have happened only because WE are the ones who couldn't understand.

Who are we when we have no one? Who witnessed our existence, that we ever happened? What lengths could we go to to know we did happen, to say "I was here"? What lengths can we go to if we are to lose a new-found feeling of belonging?

Sometimes desperation is home to all the desperate and when all else fails, this is what pulls us out of void: It gives us a mirror to see our reflection on and acknowledge that we are there. It does this by a connection to a fellow human being via the recognition of something being shared. By enabling us to give it a name and then maybe, give ourselves a name.

So, what happens when you look in a mirror and cannot see a thing?

Our primal fears have only to do with existence and nothing else.

This is a movie that asks you to keep reflecting on what a human being is and what pushes him over the edge. You just can't sit back and consume this. You have to be willing to wander in the grey areas.

So, maybe, just maybe, if you are a little lost yourself, you can then understand what this is all about. It is anything but pretentious. Sometimes being lost itself is our sole motivation because the need to resolve that or reconcile with that, at least, can drive us to do mad stuff with good intentions. This is where it gets dark. Even if you are a selfless person who has also already lost touch with yourself, you can still do things with a good deed whereby what you did helps some people as it inevitably wreaks havoc on others. I don't know if there is any intention-free type of reasoning other than that we find in science but when it comes to human beings, lines are sure all blurred and it would in fact be stupid to anticipate otherwise.

4 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Avatar (2009)

10/10

totally biased here

9 January 2015

Warning: Spoilers

I rated this movie a 10, only because it kind of reflected what I have dreamed about for very long: humans' having to remember that they belong to nature and not vice versa, following a fatal confrontation with every element of nature. I have gone further in my dreams, following all this to total destruction of mankind.

The depiction of the many cycles of life through the connection between nearly every living thing except of course us humans was breathtaking. I loved it. I loved the idea of plugging in my hair to a beautiful tree to communicate to Mother Earth. It was the first and only 3D movie I had seen and because it's been a couple of years since I watched it, some of what I said above may sound as if it's just reconstructive memory. Don't know, don't care.

I am biased because it was an enchanting tale-like version of my dream that I saw up there on the screen. I'd rather the movie didn't have all those American clichés which kind of stained it-you don't have to make your characters fall in love with one another to make a story interesting; in fact, most of the time,it does the opposite, making it sound insincere. In this instance, it felt like the whole planet would have been destroyed had not the protagonist fallen in love with Zaldana's character. I chop off a movie's rating greatly when I come across abhorrent stuff like that, this one is an exception.)

1 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Hard Candy (2005)

8/10

refreshing because sincere(politically incorrect) and that was just what I needed

13 November 2014

I don't buy into the view that art is for art's sake and that it is useless so this is kind of a jab at Wilde's preface to "the Picture of Dorian Gray". You don't do stuff just because you can. You do it because you want to. What makes you want to do it might escape me but saying that it served no purpose/was useless just because I cannot tap into your reasons and motivations would be the same as saying God exists whenever I find the universe is a dangerous place swarming with unknowns. What Wilde intended to say is not that art is useless anyway but that its use is too relative to be of any relevance at any given discussion.

What does all this have to do with Hard Candy: I find this movie refreshing in its sincerity and that's what is of use to me. If you think sincerity in a movie is among your criteria when it comes to choosing what to watch you might want to give this one a shot.

Why I think it is sincere: This movie chooses to be politically incorrect as regards to its motivation, the plot through which it chooses to pass this on and the fact that what is conveyed is rather a candid admission of concern than an in-your-face, self-righteous shoving down of personal needs disguised as (part of) "human rights" often found to be politically approved by systems of law-making and abiding. It goes on to show that what is established as "law" and thus inherently implies a worldwide consensus on whatever issue at hand, is still of our making/deeming it to be so, from which it follows that statistical measures of how widely a rule has been applied has no significance in the clear judgment of the unfettered mind which seeks no place to run and hide in an attempt to circumvent genuine reason.

So, yes, this simple movie made me think about all that. I don't think its sole premise is adding more to an already popular debate about paedophilia. I think it rather questions whether laws should be exempt from any further judgment and bettering just because they have come to be accepted as laws. It does so by introducing the human will and its contradicting stance into the equation (I'm not saying "free will" mind you). Nowhere in the movie do I see any blatant or even subtle reference to this; it's just that it's highly likely for some of you to find yourselves to be thinking as much about this aspect of the movie as about that which has already been frequently discussed on boards.

This movie, to me, has shown up the hypocrisy of the concept of what is "acceptable" in law by choosing one of its popularly discussed controversies and applying it to a specific situation. A young and intelligent person with a vendetta is all it takes to remind people how law utterly makes no sense on one-to-one encounters and where it fails and how it's been conveniently shunned by wide-spread, self-serving, legitimized perversion. We find our privacy violated at all the wrong places, at all the wrong moments and never when we need it.

Many of those people who have already seen this movie might think this review is misleading and I will still submit it.

-- Beautiful soundtrack, beautiful focus and pan out of cam, didn't need to describe all that.

0 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

bricslove

Reviews

Tell Your Friends

Recently Viewed