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Reviews
Entrance (2012)
Perfect suspense
I can't talk about this movie without talking about Ti West. He's a current, indie horror director who does "slow-burn" movies. He creates real, normal characters. He shows us their lives, but with a little menace in the background, almost imperceptible. Then there's a huge pay-off, which brings the movie to an end. Out of all his movies, "Trigger Man" best exemplifies this.
"Entrance" takes this formula, and does it at least as well as Ti West. Build-up, character development, minutiae. Then it hits you at the end.
Like "Trigger Man," half the comments on IMDb/netflix are from people who hated the movie. These people have no taste. They're dumb. Ignore them.
"Entrance" is insanely good.
Trigger Man (2007)
Really good
It's always interesting to see a movie with 90% on rottentomatoes, but 4.3/10 and all negative user reviews on IMDb. Who's right, the viewers or the critics?
My vote is with the critics on this one. "Trigger Man" is simple, intense, and well-made. People seem dissatisfied with the first half of the film, which is just three guys looking for deer to shoot in broad daylight. I don't hunt, but I'm pretty sure deer aren't active at noon. Regardless, the movie isn't about deer being hunted, it's about the three guys being hunted by an unseen hunter (or hunters).
If you're smart enough to realize that suspense is a lot more fun than action, you'll probably get something out of "Trigger Man." If not, you'll definitely want to skip it. There are plenty of dumb action movies for you anyway.
Detachment (2011)
Has potential
"Detachment" has some nice bits, but they get bogged down by unnecessary adornment. The movie is about teachers at an inner city public school. If it just followed these teachers and observed their lives, it would be a better movie. The actors are all good enough to carry that kind of movie.
Instead of taking this approach, it shoe-horns the material onto a narrative that doesn't fit. How many movies have you seen where a well- meaning man takes in a teenage prostitute, not for sex? If you've seen it as much as I have, you're probably pretty sick of it. It's a fantasy that caters to the viewers. It has nothing in common with reality. It's also the centerpiece of "Detachment."
The chalk illustrations and flashbacks are similarly ill-suited. Flat realism would be a lot more effective.
I do recommend seeing this movie, especially if you liked "American History X." I feel the same way about both movies--they have some interesting things to say, but those things are diminished by the narrative.
Good Neighbours (2010)
Good acting, but that's it
There are a lot of movies with dysfunctional people. "Good Neighbors" has three of them, and they aren't very fun to watch. Victor doesn't know when to stop talking, and I cringed at every line. Spencer has a weird, poorly explained sadistic streak, possibly linked to his paralyzed legs. Louise has trouble interacting with other people, but she gets along great with her cats. I was sort of reminded of "No Exit," the play where three people with incompatible personalities are trapped in hell, where they proceed to torture each other.
It's not a spoiler to say that one of them is a serial killer. The movie's summary gives that much away. I won't go into detail, but the fact that the movie suggests that one character is not the killer makes it all the more likely that that character is the killer. The red herrings are so obvious that they end up hurting the movie.
This is advertised as a black comedy, but I doubt anyone will laugh very much.
The best that can be said is that the acting is good from all three leads. It's not an amateurish movie, but also not a very good one.
Predators (2010)
Takes itself too seriously
"Predators" has a cool idea behind it. The premise is that a group of killers and soldiers are dropped on an artificial game preserve and hunted for sport by a group of aliens.
This could be great stuff in the right hands. I have a vision of this movie directed by Robert Rodriguez. His version would have Danny Trejo as Machete (yes I realize he's already in the movie), Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite, and Bruce Willis as John McClane. That version would be a lot funnier. The predators wouldn't stand a chance.
"Predators" goes part of the way. The human characters are ridiculous caricatures. The Chechen soldier uses a suicide bomb BECAUSE CHECHENS ARE TERRORISTS. The Japanese guy finds a samurai sword lying around, and he's an expert at using it, BECAUSE Japanese PEOPLE ARE GOOD WITH SWORDS. The white, hillbilly criminal keeps getting into conflicts with the black characters. There's also the Mexican drug-enforcer type guy, but he doesn't do much. I kept expecting him to whip out some drugs.
This is all great if you're going to make jokes, but aside from some comic relief from Topher Grace, "Predators" takes itself way too seriously. It could have been a fun B movie with some self-aware humor thrown in.
Girl Walks Into a Bar (2011)
Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't
"Girl Walks Into a Bar" is made up of a bunch of connected scenes, each taking place in a different bar. These scenes are heavily dialog-driven (sometimes with internal dialog). Some of them work, some don't.
Most of the dialog is clever, well-written, and delivered by good actors. It's unrealistic and fast paced, with no time between a line and the response to that line. This is good entertainment, but if you get bored by dialog you'll get bored fast--there's no action here.
There's a sense throughout the movie that you're watching a long, fast paced joke. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you start to wonder when the punchline is going to show up, which can be distracting.
Good movie overall, there's a lot of talent involved.
Ang-ma-reul bo-at-da (2010)
Lightweight version of the Chaser
First off, watch The Chaser: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190539/
It's one of the best thrillers I've ever seen.
I Saw the Devil has a somewhat similar premise, albeit with important differences. The main difference is that the viewer has no investment in the extreme violence that takes place on the screen, because the characters are never developed. In The Chaser, we meet a prostitute with a fever and a kid to look after. She is forced to work, and suffers at the hands of a serial killer for it. We care about her.
In I Saw the Devil, we see a woman in a car talking to her fiancé, who is a secret agent (not kidding). She is then murdered. Who is she? We have no idea, but you can imagine that her husband is upset. He will track down the killer, using ANY MEANS NECESSARY, including his own extreme violence. Does this sound familiar? It should--it's a boring adolescent revenge fantasy, and I expected better from the director of A Tale of Two Sisters and The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (which didn't appeal to me so much, but had some flair).
Very disappointing. Don't confuse this with the superior horror/thriller films we've seen out of Korea recently.
Shutter Island (2010)
Good visuals, but disappointing
This is a good movie, but for Scorsese, it's disappointing. It has the acting and the visuals, but falls flat in the subtlety department. If you watch many psychological thrillers, you will almost immediately be aware that at least some of the events in the movie exist in DiCaprio's head. This is barely a spoiler, it's just incredibly obvious.
There are many, similar movies that have an overly stressed police officer/agent/whatever, often with headaches, often with a new partner, who try to unravel a labyrinthine plot only to discover that much of what they assumed is an illusion, usually caused by past stress. If this kind of framework sounds familiar to you, Shutter Island won't be very impressive.
Some of the events in the movie lack subtlety. I would have appreciated the scenes from Dachau more if they hadn't be explained point blank-- just suggest that this knowledge of evil is with the main character, don't beat us over the head with it.
On the plus side, the island looks perfect. The wind and rain are terrific, the whitening flashes of lightning are great, and the visuals in general are spectacular.
The acting was also good, but it can't elevate an average storyline.
I do recommend this movie. It was a disappointment to me, but it's not bad, and for viewers who aren't as familiar with psychological thrillers, it might be quite fresh.
Chugyeokja (2008)
Perfect Thriller
In The Chaser, an ex-detective pimp tries to save one of his girls from a serial killer. He is moved to help by her daughter, and his own guilt in being the one to put her in harm's way.
With a normal Hollywood directing job, this would be a standard story about how the pimp rediscovers himself as a detective. Since this is a Korean film, it is much more than that. There is still the underlying theme of the pimp redeeming himself, but it's a suggestion, not a constantly repeated device that's jammed down the audience's throat. There is a large amount of dark humor in the movie, especially near the beginning, where constant comical misunderstandings and coincidences make the situation no less tense. The killer is made even more sinister by his incompetence, a big stretch from the standard superhuman serial killers in American films who all too often seem all knowing and all powerful.
Things never slow down, and the movie never quite lets go of its distinctive sense of humor (consider that that Mayor of Seoul is ambushed by a man wielding his own feces--and this has consequences for the police trying to prosecute the killer).
Although there is a lot of humor, this is a violent movie, and it does not shy away from its inevitable conclusion. Sadly, there's already an American remake in the works. Don't see that one, it will be bad. See this one instead, it's the best movie I've seen in a long time.