Watched in 2021
A log of all the films I have watched in 2021.
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15 titles
- DirectorJohn FordStarsJohn WayneJeffrey HunterVera MilesAn American Civil War veteran embarks on a years-long journey to rescue his niece from the Comanches after the rest of his brother's family is massacred in a raid on their Texas farm.January 8
Ford really was one to paint on big canvases. The awe-inspiring shots of landscapes set a timeless background for a story that never runs forward in a simple, straight line, but instead it functions on multiple layers with several engines running in different directions at the same time - without ever seeming like it is stretched too much or out of focus.
5/5 - DirectorDavid WorthStarsRobert RuslerJennifer GareisFredric LehneA small US attack force is sent to an East European country to aid the government in neutralizing a powerful drug syndicate.January 15
There's always room in the world for a film with good old gum-chewing pilots exercising in front of a gigantic national flag. Especially when it's about a veteran pilot who has got a chip on his shoulder about past service, but it is nothing that tragic news and a little screaming in the forest can't change. At times Air Strikes resembles a film made in someone's backyard (luckily in an entertaining kind of way), at other times it is actually sufficient as trash entertainment that covers the basics of film editing and has put some effort and money into scenes that are not handled with hilariously cheap CGI. It also seems that just as much as they wanted to show the action scenes, they wanted to shoot club scenes with numerous panty shots and an officer who obsessively reads Lord of the Rings no matter what goes on around him. And everything is right in the world when a film ends with echoing chants of "USA! USA! USA!".
2/5 - DirectorTakayuki HiraoStarsMirai KataokaTakuma NegishiAmi TaniguchiThe friends Kaori, Erika and Aki are on a vacation to celebrate their upcoming graduation, when suddenly an infestation of mysterious walking fish forces them to reevaluate everything they care about in order to stay alive.February 16
An admirable effort at unintentionally making a bad thing even worse.
1/5 - DirectorStephen KingStarsEmilio EstevezPat HingleLaura HarringtonA group of people try to survive when machines start to come alive and become homicidal.March 9
The ultimate problem of Maximum Overdrive is that King was given a proper budget for a project that ought to have been filmed in his backyard with toy trucks and figurines.
2/5 - DirectorDwight H. LittleStarsBrett StimelyRajinikanthA.R. NicholasAn American couple on a business trip to Bangalore, India is dragged into the theft of a ruby called 'Bloodstone'. The wife is kidnapped, and the husband teams up with a resourceful taxi driver to free his wife and retrieve the ruby.March 20
Bloodstone has the wonderful quality of being something wandering between a straight-up profesional lackluster and a blast of amateur film making. With the leading couple's cheap porn film dialogue and a supporting cast populated by Mr Bean impersonations Bloodstone would be silly enough, but it also has the almighty Rajinikanth casually appearing as a badass taxi driver and then driving off into the sunset.
2/5 - DirectorTed KotcheffStarsGeorge SegalJacqueline BissetRobert MorleyOne by one, the greatest Chefs in Europe are being killed. Each chef murdered in the same manner that their own special dish is prepared in. Food critics and the (many) self-proclaimed greatest Chefs in Europe demand the mystery be solved.March 21
The characters are all driven by unlimited libido, obsessed with food and surrounded by an environment too glorious and good to be true. Be it cooks or detectives, all of them live on sudden impulses and create careers around their fetishes. In short, the film is about a hedonistic parade of sorts, but it is not as much a pleasure for the viewer as it is for the characters - although that sort of seems to be the point because the film seems to be disgusted with its characters. The dialogue flows smoothly, the film is visually decorated like a cake and the writer also has a talent for endlessly spewing somewhat funny food related jokes.
4/5 - DirectorAleksander NordaasStarsSilje ReinåmoErlend NervoldJon Sigve SkardEstranged friends Leo (a crime-scene cleaner) and hired-hand Elvis are cleaning up a particularly messy casualty deep in the Norwegian woods. When Elvis accidentally finds a secret passage that leads to a subterranean living space, he also encounters Thale, a beautiful young woman who sings, but does not speak. Though they are intrigued and concerned for her, they are ill-prepared when others, tracking Thale, finally catch up to her.April 25
Led by the star performances of the most stonefaced man in Scandinavia and a constantly sweaty man, Thale offers quirky pleasures for anyone looking for not-really-horror-but-sort-of stories related to Nordic mythology, but all it amounts to is a cheap job that even ends up masquerading as a character-driven story.
2/5 - DirectorGerard JohnsonStarsPeter FerdinandoGreg KamRicky GroverA thriller centered on a serial killer in a rundown London suburb.May 18
Tony displays London's dirty corners not only with its screenplay that peeks into several worlds outside the law-abiding masses, but also with its crude aesthetics that range from the protagonist's lifeless presence and the gray-ish and downright ugly locations to uneasy and shaky camerawork. By averting regular plot development Tony is set on expressing an unsettling idea, but it is also this intended lack of consequence that ends up being its downfall. Because it is not convincing enough as an aesthetic ride, its simplicity and tendency to be too roundabout about key matters leaves the viewer yearning for more. That said, as a fatalistically cynic thought experiment it is pleasant enough.
3/5 - DirectorJ.J. AbramsStarsDaisy RidleyJohn BoyegaOscar IsaacAs a new threat to the galaxy rises, Rey, a desert scavenger, and Finn, an ex-stormtrooper, must join Han Solo and Chewbacca to search for the one hope of restoring peace.May 24
Being driven by thrills rather than the backbone of the story, The Force Awakens stays true to a classic adventure formula in its own way, but that is also the reason for its downfall. What begins as a charming glimpse of otherworldly entertainment gradually turns out to be wish fulfillment rather than genuine craftsmanship as the tasty bits of the story are established. Succeeding in delivering classic adventure requires that childlike passion for wonder, but in this case the makers forgot to look beyond the sandbox. As the first part of the trilogy, some of these flaws could be overlooked if they fell into the right places later on, but The Force Awakens lays a foundation for even worse things to come.
3/5 - DirectorRian JohnsonStarsDaisy RidleyJohn BoyegaMark HamillRey develops her abilities with the help of Luke Skywalker, as the Resistance prepares for battle against the First Order.May 24
A rewatch only confirmed The Last Jedi to be one of the most notorious and inexcusable character and franchise rapes in film history. A lot has been said about the film already so I'm not delving into its major problems, but on rewatch I realized just how much awful humor the film is stuffed with. What should have been a minor alteration of the trademark majestic style at best is a way too impactful restyling that shatters the film. A franchise of epic and conventional storytelling does not mesh well with sarcasm of this caliber. The problem becomes even more obvious during the dramatic peaks when the tonal change is nothing but cognitive dissonance.
1/5 - DirectorJ.J. AbramsStarsDaisy RidleyJohn BoyegaOscar IsaacThe surviving Resistance faces the First Order once again in the conclusion of the Skywalker saga.May 24
Ditching out Rian Johnson is not enough to save this already-broken-to-pieces trilogy and having JJ Abrams dance a little dance on its grave is not going to help anything. With stylistic awkwardness and obsession with reversing expectations gone, the final part desperately tries to look like a legit Star Wars film, but takes an even deeper dive into the cuckoo land of nonsense writing.
1/5 - DirectorGareth EdwardsStarsFelicity JonesDiego LunaAlan TudykIn a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire's ultimate weapon of destruction.May 25
By Star Wars standards a restrained and down-to-earth film that doesn't get sidetracked by irrelevant hocus pocus or the grand themes of the franchise. Instead it delivers a straightforward but gripping story that understands its boundaries and makes the most of its limited resources.
4/5 - DirectorRon HowardStarsAlden EhrenreichWoody HarrelsonEmilia ClarkeDuring an adventure in the criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his future co-pilot Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian years before joining the Rebel Alliance.May 25
Given how much of a wild ride Star Wars has had ever since Disney has started to milk money out of it, I was surprised to find that this spin-off film was just innocently pleasing and not really rousing any sort of response one way or another - despite its somewhat dubious reputation. It's just the sort of lighthearted romp that one expects from its protagonist's origin story (a ragtag gang of shady characters, tricky situations and backstabbing) and the film plays it safe without really reaching for too much, which is by no means a bad thing. The only thing really sticking out was the heavily underlined concern for minority rights in the galaxy that doesn't really fit well with the film or the franchise otherwise.
3/5 - DirectorTed KotcheffStarsDonald PleasenceGary BondChips RaffertyAfter a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.August 7
Even after seeing more than enough to get tired of the "isolated society madness" subgenre, Wake in Fright manages to pack a punch in a cleverly and surprisingly subdued way. There's no direct physical threat aimed at the protagonist even during his lowest moments yet there's a disgustingly palpable sense of dread that works really well with the Australian setting.
4/5 - DirectorMahiro MaedaKatsuichi NakayamaKazuya TsurumakiStarsMegumi OgataMegumi HayashibaraYûko MiyamuraMisato and her anti-NERV group WILLE arrive in Paris, a city now red from core-ization. Crew from the flagship Wunder land on a containment tower.August 25
Anno bringing a momentous film series and franchise to an end in a way only he can.
5/5