imdbcom-69969 Reviews

Nothing Bad Can Happen (2013)

Lack of credibility and false claim spoil an otherwise good work

[3/10 · 27 October 2023]

The real life story on which the writer/director, Katrin Gebbe, "based" her script on involves a mentally handicapped 29 yo man, Thies Fischer, who was exploited for money while being humiliated and finally tortured to death by a couple, Werner and Manuela H.

The real-life event is believable while this movie distorted script is not, by a long shot. Even a really naive young religious person would not behave this way. The choice made by the writer to substitute a mental handicap for a strong faith (perhaps , in doing so, revealing of her own perception of faith) is mind blogging since it totally disserves the whole narrative by considerably decreasing it credibility. Moreover, the financial exploitation that characterizes the primary motive of the real case murderer becomes an insignificant details and is replaced by purely sadistic tendencies. Advising the viewers that the story is "based" on a true event is therefore dishonest, at best. "Remotely inspired by", maybe, but not "based on".

Acting, production and camera work throughout the movie are outstanding, but, in my view, this can't make up for the fact that the script lacks credibility and that this false claim just stands out as a marketing ploy to exploit a very sad event.

Max & Leon (2016)

Difficile de faire plus niais

[1/10 · 12 October 2023]

Honestly, I could not watch the whole shebang for sanity reason. The level of the "gags" that come at ultra high frequency is so low, one could wonder if it's targeting toddlers or if quantity is supposed to compensate for quality in the director's mind. I guess if you are older than 5 y.o, it probably won't work for you either. It's so lame, I decided to check Jonathan Barré's pedigree. Beside this film, he is responsible for two other disasters, also with Grégoire Ludig and David Marsais. It's worth checking these two on YouTube, it helps understand how money can ever be spent to make such monumental garbage. They apparently have an audience. Pretty sad.

Saul at Night (2019)

A "short" would have amply sufficed

[3/10 · 13 May 2023]

There are too few details that could explain, or at least give some clues about the situation and too little depiction of the characters' inner selves to drag this into a full-length movie. Keeping everything at a symbolic level, a "short" 20 min version would have been acceptable because some ideas in there about communication, or absence thereof, and the absurdity of a world dominated by computers are not new but are given an original context. Acting is ok but the script is so minimalist and the characters so poorly developed anyway that it does not require any high-level interpretation. The movie reminded me of Lluís Quílez's Grafitti, a beautiful short.

Abina and the Important Men (2017)

Excellent material for grey matter at any age

[8/10 · 19 April 2023]

The politically charged quote from Michel-Rolph Trouillot, "History is an act of silencing", elegantly brought in at the end of Abina's personal story, is right on target. As war propaganda and its systematic silencing for a constructed and biased narrative have today become pervasive in almost all the Western World news outlets while Ukrainian and Russian men are sent out to be killed in a senseless war, this brilliantly realized and articulated animation would be on my top 5 list to recommend for young adults and old politicians alike, from both sides.

Slavery has never been eradicated, it has just been made more discreet.

Everything Else (2016)

A boring documentary about lonelyness

[2/10 · 13 April 2023]

Long takes in cinema, even if totally devoid of any meaning, are becoming more and more fashionable and supposed to be super artsy, intellectual, and inspired.

So we are supposed to stare at Mrs. Barraza feet because this is going to convey somehow a sense of something (which the lesser beings won't be able to capture, of course).

From start to end, we are actually exposed to bland episodes of Doña Flor's empty life. In fact, it rapidly becomes evident that the director, a documentary maker by trade, and also the writer, has absolutely nothing to say about loneliness... other than filming it and reproducing it like a photocopier. But even as a documentary, it just lay flat, hollow and plain boring.

The House by the Sea (2017)

Theatrical dialogues don't work here...

[4/10 · 23 January 2023]

How to ruin a movie with artificial theatrical dialogues generously sprinkled from start to end. Guédiguian and Valletti apparently found the way. What a nightmare it must have been for these actors, most of them talented, to go through these ridiculous scenes. On top of that, there is nothing really original in the plot itself and the camera work, similarly bland, does nothing to at least make it esthetically beautiful. To top it up, none of the overly stereotyped characters is developed enough to summon even a little bit of empathy or give some much-needed relief. Same impression about the silly social and political commentaries randomly thrown out of the blue, that are supposedly spicing up this tasteless salad. For a Mediterranean dish, it is a quite a spectacular failure.

Winterjagd (2017 TV Movie)

More of a theater play than a movie

[6/10 · 8 October 2022]

Every aspect of this so-called movie screams of a theatrical performance. Even the way the actors "act", quite unnaturally, just slightly emphasizing emotions and facial movements a tiny bit too much, too continuously, just like during a live play, on stage, because the audience is far away, and not all of them have binocular.... Except maybe for the old Nazi guy who sounded and looked somehow a lot more real and believable to me than the two women.

That being said, the script is quite fine and holds its own, even if quite predictable, not the ending, but the underlying predicament.

All in all, it's a nice little theatre piece. Worth watching, in my opinion.

Swim (I) (2021)

The chalenge is...

[1/10 · 26 August 2021]

... to find out what in this movie is not beyond ridiculous or plain stupid, from the script to "acting" to the music to camera work... everything. The stakes are high. It's a total wonder that such a putrid garbage can actually be shot, produced and sold as a movie. Makes one logically questions whether the whole thing is not just a cover up for some other lousy sharky business.

The Descent (2005)

if only...

[3/10 · 27 May 2021]

... half the energy and money spent on special effects, stupid monster make up and movie sets was actually spent on trying to get an original and interesting script, so called horror movies would not score that badly so systematically. I mean, the director admit himself it did not even have a clue what the end was going to be even after starting to shoot. Compare to other horror flicks, this one probably ranks in the top, but as a film, it still largely bellow mediocrity in my book, by a very long shot.

OtherLife (2017)

Every single scene is filmed like a commercial... and it gets tiring.

[2/10 · 30 April 2021]

Everything is so unnatural in this movie that I felt impossible to feel anything for the characters. Every time the main character walks a few meters of do something on her computer, the whole scene looks like a carefully designed and choreographed cat walk, a commercial for Apple Computer or the launching clip for a new L'Oréal mascara as we get yet another close-up on De Gouw's pretty face. After 30 min., I was seriously overdosing on this regimen.

But that's not all, on top of Freene's cliched cam, after 40 min., the whole thing starts to lose any footing that would give some credibility to the story line and the script just diverges into nonsensical bits and pieces that are barely holding each other. Add Palmer & Seker's not too subtle ears drilling score in the background, and you get the recipe for that painful mix of everything - reality, memories, droplet induced hallucinations, space-time travel, mater annihilation, almost anything goes... We were spared the zombies. Good.

Bullet Boy (2004)

Almost totally empty

[2/10 · 11 April 2021]

So, during the first hour, we slowly learn that petty criminals have a habit of doing stupid things for stupid reasons and that their children have a tendency to imitate them. After this quite remarkable but rather slow social enlightenment, I felt already bored to death since meanwhile, character development remained rather microscopic. However, that's pretty much what have to be content with when said children enter into one a rather ridiculously predictable plot-turn. They play with the gun... Ah... Guess what. Ok. So, once this is done, the script still has no mercy. We now have to endure the religious soapy crap for a little while, while we still have no clue who these people really are, or only vaguely. I suppose them being Black should be enough. But we are not offer any respite yet, because the hero is now back on murder scene where the corp still mysteriously lays for the enjoyment of everybody, and miraculously finds the jackpot in a bed frame. Great. So we enter complete disaster territory as the script insist for inserting several stereotypical episodes of the sad and distressed mama melodramatic interludes. But we are now at the hospital where the injured kid with a nasty 9mm bullet wound in his right shoulder is having a chat with his pal and has absolutely no problem moving his right arm around and grabbing a candy off a bag... etc...

I suppose the project just meant to be a generic depiction of small gangsta life in London. Far from being fascinating at any level, it ends up being as mediocre as the fuzzy characters who gesticulate aimlessly front start to end on the screen. May as well read the local news... Beyond boring I am afraid.

Euphoria (2013)

Decent film but wrong focus

[6/10 · 11 April 2021]

Brooke Palsson plays a very credible teenager Michelle, with clever subtle touches in every single moves and situations and the plot is ok, although a bit limited. The main problem is that Michelle is actually fine. She is balanced and despite some normal mistakes one would expect from a teenager, she actually behaves quite well, so her minor struggles are not so interesting. The character who has huge issues is her Mom, but we only get a clue about her real motives quite late in the movie. Her intriguing persona and the reason for her obsession and lack of confidence as a Mom is not sufficiently explored. So the movie ends up a bit dull. If it were not for Palsson performance, it would have been a fail.

White Calm (2020)

A record

[2/10 · 4 March 2021]

An hour and eighteen minutes of record breaking repetitive platitudes, empty statements and meaningless gesticulations. But this is filmed in B&W with minimalist sound, and is therefore, of course, Art-in-its-Purest-Form that only the chosen, the gifted intellectual elite, will be able to apprehend.

Amityville Island (2020)

Worth sampling it here and there, just for fun

[1/10 · 22 February 2021]

As this is the worst rating I've ever seen here, I decided to sample it randomly just to get an idea how low it can go. I wasn't disappointed. If you want to get an idea of what a -10 star would be if one could select that rating, this is it. It still begs the question of who actually make this kind of gigantic pile of crap, who would produce it, and for what purpose...

The Sum of All Fears (2002)

The Sum of All Stupidities

[2/10 · 28 January 2021]

As the film accumulates so many nonsensical plot twists, typical Hollywood grandiose visuals (big $$$ supposedly spent to compensate for its vacuity), bad acting (the main role should try for Superman next time) it is on a collision course with a massive fiasco that I did not even bear to watch to the end (but almost). The biggest mystery to me is how that garbage could get that overall score of 6+

Look Away (2018)

For teen girls between 15 and 15.5 year old.

[3/10 · 18 January 2021]

... and even though, they probably have enough working neurons already to walk away before the credits rolls in. Too bad, the acting is generally good, hence 3 stars, but that's about it. The script is garbage, nothing is neither believable nor very subtle, everything is cliché, stretched and spelled out, unnecessarily, and this is regrettable because the base story has potential.

14 Cameras (2018)

Don't use the ladder, just throw it down there!

[1/10 · 17 January 2021]

The idea is not bad, but the story line is so nonsensical that it throws the whole movie deep into that infamous dreaded hole, where it will deservedly rot for ever. In other words : pure garbage.

Cash Only (2015)

Hand held camera abuse

[4/10 · 15 January 2021]

Story is Ok. Acting is good. But they had to spoil it all with the filming. Like the guys behind the camera is just out of film school and is just carried over beyond recognition by close range hand held camera work. "Look! I am doing an action movie, it got to be shaking and moving in all direction and I gonna shove my lens right into every thing". Ok. So it works for a while and then becomes annoying, then just plain sickening. Too bad.

Apartment 407 (2016)

Not much in it

[4/10 · 10 January 2021]

Hope the lead actress got some therapeutic effect from it, because beside that, this film is empty. Let's see: the sex slave trade is bad, the traders are bad guys, the clients are bad guys with bad maners, and any gullible borderline stupid girls and woman can potentially fall victim of these bad guys because these bad guys are amazingly good at seducing and catching gullible borderline stupid girls. Uh.. you did not know? Well, here you go then. But that's it. Nothing else. Absolutely nada. No character development, no logic in the script, no social and/or political perspective, nothing. Too bad. Could have been much better.

Useless (2020)

Very good acting from the horse

[4/10 · 9 January 2021]

Relatively speaking, the horse, Lucky, is acting quite well all along. The script, and the direction, might not have helped the other creatures, especially the ones usually capable of speech. They may have been intimidated by the music though, that totally redefines the meaning of the word "cheesy" and might have been played directly on stage in an attempt to stimulate the actors. Still, I managed to go through, doing other benign little things on the side. No one has been hurt in the watching of this movie. Hence 4 stars.

Nubes Rojas (2016)

Not bad enough to be laughable but almost there...

[2/10 · 31 December 2020]

Almost everything is either really bad or mediocre in this movie. Acting, script, plot, filming, directing... I almost hoped it'd get worst to at least become hilarious, but it did not. It just remained empty, flat and boring.

Medusa (IV) (2015)

Unbearable acting

[2/10 · 6 June 2020]

The acting is so bad I could not watch more than 5 minutes. It's unbearable.

Shameful Secrets (1993 TV Movie)

The director probably had enough of it as well...

[3/10 · 3 May 2020]

...so he walked away before the end and the movie doesn't really conclude properly after dragging more than an hour and a half with the same issue. The pianist, unfortunately, stayed all along and felt he had to play through every sing scene for drama purpose. Despite good acting all around, this movie is almost as painful to go through as the issue it is supposed to depict.

Pulse (2018)

Idea was good, execution is pathetic

[3/10 · 27 April 2020]

The plot is interesting and could have been exploited a lot better. Unfortunately, the dialogues are beyond idiotic, simplistic, unatural and forced. Even better actors wouldn't have been able to save it. I mostly felt sorry fot them, thinking they had to learn their dull lines and try their best when the camera was rolling.

Cry in the Wild: The Taking of Peggy Ann (1991 TV Movie)

Was not too bad until...

[4/10 · 22 April 2020]

... the cops start shooting a deluge of lead at a suspect runing while holding a hostage close to him. Because a nice gun fight had to be inserted for drama effect, right? Ok, but that makes the movie becomes completely even more idiotic than a mediocre western, despite the script being relatively believable until that point. Congrats for ruining a potentially good movie.