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andrewwhopkinson
Reviews
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Last 15 minutes of The Road Warrior stretched to 2 hours
I have this movie 2 stars only because of the incredible set design, and some of those cars are just insane. George Miller got his wet dream I suppose to make this movie, I am sure the budget was 50x more than he got in his previous Max movies. Well George, sometimes less is more. Sometimes it's better to have some constraints, just look at Quentin Tarantino. As soon as he got lots of money his movies became over long, self indulgent messes. George seemed to have listened to all the praise about how good the ending chase scene was in The Road Warrior so he made a movie of just that. Well that's like a meal of just cake. It may feel good going down, but it doesn't sit well. What made the last 15 minutes of TRW so good is the previous hour and a half of plot and character build up, without that it does not have same effect, no matter how many explosions and insane stunts you throw at the screen, it just numbs the brain. Miller stated that 90% of the movie was practical stunts but I find this hard to believe. I saw a LOT of CGI.
This movie has no charm, no feeling of engagement, and very little sense of realism. People fly through the air crash on the ground with barely a scratch. Max has his leg brace but runs around like a football player. Some pale faced kid needs a "blood bag" for blood transfusions and then suddenly he doesn't? And old lady shoves a shell casing in someones eye? A guy is wearing a mask rips his face off when yanked off? Whatever happened to the idea that things like gasoline and bullets are rare in post apocalypse? Where are these things being manufactured? Oh well I guess you are supposed to ask these questions, just enjoy the explosions and the women being...uhm...milked.
Charlize Theron is good but based on interviews she had no idea what she was doing and to me it shows, she cries when she is told to but her character is poorly developed. We get her back story and then 5 minutes later she has this big breakdown, which has no weight to it. The movie would have been better with fewer characters, cut out the nux kid and the old ladies and just focus on Furiosa and Max. And while we are at it, this movie is called Mad Max, not Mad Charlize, why does he seem like a side character? And why show his beloved last of the V8 interceptors and crash it 1 minute later? And his character just didn't feel like Max, Max was the coolest of the cool with a tinge of a maniac, this guy is all frantic and comes across as just another action hero. This movie had some potential to be epic, but it needed more balance, a better script and more realism. Movies have become rides.
Tenet (2020)
Nolan should stick to character studies, lay off the "science"
This movie continues along the same vein as Interstellar, trying to be some deep, complex sci-fi type of story with a lot of "scientific" garbledeegook that Nolan probably got from watching a few youtube videos. Now I know this because I too browse around youtube watching interesting science documentaries or science based channels, however I don't go around making movies pretending like I understand them enough to try and weave it into a plot and have it make sense. And that is the biggest problem of this movie and Intersteller, the incredible pretense. The pretentiousness just oozes from every over acted, mumbled scene and it is infuriating. Francis Ford Coppolla said that making a pretentious film is the worst sin a film maker can make. Just because Nolan has scientific advisors does NOT mean any of the story makes sense or is scientifically plausible. Basically it just means Nolan asked them "is entropy a thing?" "I saw on a youtube video that electrons move backwards in time, is that true?" (which btw, after doing some quick googling, that is a positron, not an electron).
I won't try and explain the plot, because honestly I didn't really understand it, nor do I think did Nolan. Something to do with time travel, World War III, an "algorithm", things and people being "inverted" or some such nonsense. (And btw, an algorithm is a mathematical formula or set of functions not a 4 foot long piece of metal!). You know a movie is bad when there is constant exposition and dialogue where people just explain the plot. Somebody once said that movies should show and not tell, after all they are primarily a visual medium. 2001 A Space Odyssey is a perfect example of this, there is very little dialogue in the movie, almost none in the third act. It lets the viewer try and figure things out, but does not have everything at a rediculous kinetic energy like Tenet does so you don't even have time for your brain to process. I think that is done by design. If some part of the movie doesn't work, instead of fixing it, Nolan just does some quick edits, and then throws in some pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo and then moves on. A good movie is more than just impressive visuals and actors "emoting" in a very serious way, on the surface it makes you feel like you are watching a great movie, until you realize that the plot makes no sense and that there is no connecting between the characters, or as a viewer, for the characters.
A lot of this movie almost seems like a parody of Nolan, people speaking quickly and almost inaudibly, sometimes with food in their mouths, sometimes while sailing in loud winds with headsets on etc. Does Nolan do this intentially to hide problems or to make you watch the movie multiple times? I'm not sure, either way it is very annoying.
After watching Tenet, I went back and watched some earlier Nolan movies like Memento, which is actually a great movie. Sometimes less is more, and Nolan did a lot with a limited budget, and used the reversing shooting effect ONCE for maybe 30 seconds, as opposed to every 10 minutes over and over to dazzle the eye and numb the brain. Nolan should go back to these character studies and leave the sci-fi movies alone.
The Departed (2006)
Cliched movie for meatheads
I considered giving it 2 stars because DiCaprio is in it and he is such a good actor. However, I couldn't make it through this movie. I don't mind violence or swearing, but it should serve a purpose, not be there to make the movie seem "edgy". Before looking up who directed this movie I thought the director was a Scorcese wannabe until I found out he DID direct it. It's hard to tell, other than the fact that involves his favourite subject matter, criminal gangs. There is none of the characteristic Scorcese camera movement and sweeps.
Anyway, this movie is so full of cliches I couldn't stand it. It is also stuffed with so many terrible boston accents, even from actors who are FROM Boston. The cast is a check list of 2000s male jerk leads, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Jack Nicholson. I think they must have blown the budget on the salaries because the story is infantile and predictable. Also a lot of it doesn't make sense, Mark Wahlberg is incredibly aggressive and insulting towards Leonardo's character for no apparent reason other than to give him some motivation I guess? It does not seem realistic that his boss (another big hitter Martin Sheen) would let him go off like that. It seems like their roles should have been reversed. Also, how does the rather slender DiCaprio beat the hell out of so many people clearly much larger than him?
If you have half a brain I would avoid this movie, watch Goodfellas instead, at least that had some style.