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flemur13013
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Invasion (2021)
Very slow, terrible photography...
...but there's something that makes me fast-forward through most of it, hoping for something like an invasion, rather than just giving up on it.
TV shows that are too dark to see easily whilst viewing in a normally lighted room are a pet peeve of mine because good cinematographers can create a feeling of darkness with clever lighting, but here everything is underexposed by at least one "stop", often two, for no apparent reason. The characters are boring or obnoxious (the school kids). Just finished FF-ing thru most of E5 and still no aliens except for those few seconds in the desert where a large rubbery triangle forcefully expelled air.
Boss Level (2020)
3/10 - why so over rated?
Gibson, the reason I watched the movie, was dull and uninteresting throughout.
Grillo has a great presence, though, and the show seemed to start out as a fun, cartoonish action-hero movie with colorful seedy characters hanging out at a waterfront bar, but that got boring with the repetition of almost exactly the same scenes. There didn't seem to be a plot except that perhaps if Grillo became a good Daddy like the Egyptian character Osiris, then the Earth would not be destroyed. Or something.
Tin Star (2017)
Watched and enjoyed it, l but too many plot holes
The "Jack Worth" character was essentially a violent manipulative psychopathic bully, and quite unlikable. All the nonsense he got away with without any repercussions, including shooting another cop in the leg on two different occasions, made it seem similar to a Batman-style fantasy movie, rather than a serious drama; the card-game robbery scene belonged in a video game.
I considered skipping the last episode because I wanted to imagine that Worth got his "just deserts" rather than witness the predictable ending.
Alien Predator (2018)
shoot into the bushes and yell
A bunch of guys nervously walk through the jungle and occasionally start shooting into the bushes and yelling "Move move move!" Then they sneak along some more, then they hear growling and start shooting into the bushes and yelling "go go go!" Then some archeologists find some funky skulls, which have nothing to do with anything. Then at the end they find one guy vaguel dressed up like the "Predator", slowing moving around in a set with a lot of colored lights, but he's not mean, he just crash landed and wants to leave, which he does.
The End.
The Rain (2018)
Come for the apocalypse, stay for the plot holes.
We didn't like this much at first, mostly because of the noxious kids, but kept watching it, then enjoying it. Some of the entertainment results from finding the "plot holes" and/or contrived scenes, e.g. after about 5 minutes in the bunker, the girl knows how to open the outside door, seemingly by instinct, but after 5 years in the bunker the boy still doesn't know how. The guy with the gun seems to make weird choices of targets - he shoots people who will die in a few moments, but doesn't shoot dangerous people who are threatening them....and doesn't seem concerned about running out of bullets. Their clothes are too new but the other scenery is well done.
Aftershock (2012)
Mixed movie, but if you think YOU had a bad day...
A really slow start - skip to about 0:20 or 0:25 or so, a few minutes before the earthquake starts.
After that it's just one d*amned thing after another when the earthquake cracks open the prison and the inmates run wild. Rather grisly and unpleasant scenes, but not unrealistic, which just made them worse.
Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)
Kept nodding off
We watched this to the end for some reason, except for "wake up" to each other, and then both asked "why?"
Mumbly dialog and horrible photography, unless you want to look at a nicely-lit lamp in a dark room with an outline of somebody with no visible face, or properly exposed car headlights and invisible drivers and dark blobs moving around for for about 3/4 of the movie. A better photographer could imply "dark" or "dreary" while keeping visible things which are more interesting than a lamp or car headlights. Anyway, the criminal gets shot and I guess finally dies at the end, like he should.
Stone (2010)
We quit watching after about 20 minutes.
It was just too painful.
Norton did a good job of playing a regular middle-class guy pretending to be a criminal.
You could really tell he was just a regular guy because of the goofy hair-do and fakey accent, like what a high-school kid might come up with so as to appear tough.
De Niro did a good job of playing a regular mild-mannered accountant-type guy pretending to be someone who worked with criminals.
You could really tell he was just another regular guy because he was completely ignorant of how criminals manipulate people, and he kept a picture of his wife on his desk where incarcerated murderers could see it and start interesting discussions with him about his family life.
Last Passenger (2013)
Very slow and illogical
It starts out with about 20-30 minutes of people riding on a train, which was pretty fascinating because they talk to each other, a bit like regular people on a regular train, but more boring because they're just reading a boring script.
Then the train speeds up a bit, I guess. The passengers never seem very worried about it. They try to break into the engineer's compartment but give up in a few minutes. They don't try to pry the door open, they just bang on it and then give up.
Then they try to uncouple their car, but again give up in a few minutes. There's a piece of metal covering the coupling that looks like two people could pull it up and bend it out of the way, but they never try. One guy goes outside, then gives up after a few minutes and comes back in - just in time! A tunnel!
After that they sit around drinking and telling jokes while waiting for a special time to decouple the car: the special time is when they're going uphill, which would, in reality, make the train car harder to decouple.
Then they try to blow up the coupling by putting a fire extinguisher over it, covering it with cloth, pouring a few ounces of booze on it and setting fire to it.
Those few ounces of alcohol somehow set fire to the metal of the train and the metal continues to burn for the rest of the movie, finally rapidly spreading to the front of the train like gunpowder, for no apparent reason, then making the train engine explode while the one guy finally jumps off - right before the train stops.
It was awful.
Salt and Fire (2016)
Very slow and nonsensical but nice pictures!
Why kidnap someone? So they'll write an impassioned article with more than just data! What is the kidnapped woman going to write an impassioned article about? Dunno! The salt flats and the volcano existed before humans got there, but apparently the kidnapper doesn't know this, and thinks he did something to cause the salt flats, so he needs an impassioned article about why he's a jerk even though he's not a jerk except for kidnapping people for no good reason.
The paramilitary guys standing around looking serious in their ski masks all over the place for no apparent reason were funny.
Best part of the movie: reading about the salt flats and volcano on the internet after the movie was over; it's a strange part of the world.
Tooken (2015)
Very dumb but couldn't help laughing
Like the titles says. Yes, there are too many dick jokes, but there were a few scenes were I couldn't stop laughing, which is rare nowadays. Those wacky Albanians! The main guy did a pretty good imitation of Liam's weird, hovering parental concern, although there weren't very many other references to the 'Taken' films...except for saying "taken" rather than "kidnapped" because it sounds goofy, like it did in the originals.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Way too long, too much talking
"Hateful Eight" was mostly a room full of people insulting each other, and a couple of brief "shoot-outs"; cut down to proper length it'd make a decent half-hour, old "Gunsmoke" episode. As someone else mentioned, it came across as a "stage play".
All the characters were, if not "hateful", at least unpleasant, and there was nobody to root for, or against. We can just about see the shooting location from our house, and they didn't take advantage of the spectacular scenery: camera work was pedestrian and unexciting. A couple of uses of modern words and phrases spoiled the feeling of the time period, and dumb statements about the snow melting in a couple of days (a couple of months would be right) didn't help us believe that the characters knew the area.
Samuel Jackson stood out as a sadistic homosexual bounty-hunter, helped by the fact that he looks like an elf from Hell. Kurt Russel was unfortunately killed off early because the other actors were rather boring - sitting around talking didn't help much. Walton Goggins, the main smirking criminal from the series "Justified", played the same character here.
Our main impression was "will it never end?"
Fertile Ground (2011)
Had to watch it because my girlfriend's nephew was in it.
I "had to" watch it because my girlfriend's nephew was in it.
The nephew did all right in his small part.
The two main characters were not very likable, so it was difficult to "care" about what happened to them.
The bad background music was louder than the dialog in some places; the sound was also echo-y and sometimes hard to understand.
After moving - away from the woman's friends so she can get over her depression, which doesn't make any sense - they find an adult human skull in the clogged drain of their new house, which also doesn't make any sense because the pipe was too small.
Some medium-sized furry animals I couldn't identify - big squirrels? - made a couple of appearances for no apparent reason.
I guess it was supposed to be about ghosts, but it seemed more like the woman was just getting nutty. After imagining some other women wandering around in a bloody dress, she ends up killing hubby and best friend, then ends up in a padded cell after or while having a baby.
Altogether not worth watching unless you're trying to sleep.
Scenic Route (2013)
Guys were too womanish
The movie was forced and unrealistic, mainly because the two guys were like two women, an impression created at the start when one fakes a broken engine so they can "talk": manipulative and weak. Then they talked about womanly subjects - relationships, etc. - that guys almost never talk about. And they talked too much.
They were both were pretty stupid, too, leaving the truck with the hood down and no note on the window, so passers-by just passed by; and one couldn't tell if the other was dead or alive? He didn't know how to take a pulse, or what? Jeez. The ending, with the guy staring at the ceiling and wondering if their little adventure really happened was pointless and overly melodramatic.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Pretty boring
I'm pretty surprised at all the good reviews because this movie was REALLY boring, so boring that we never made it to the end.
First there's Batman complaining, in a boring way, that he's been picked on and his knees and everything else hurts because there's no cartilage left. It must've been psychosomatic because he seems to be completely cured shortly after - or maybe he was taking tons of Percocet, and he's boring because he's stoned. The Batman guy comes across as an accountant, not a super hero.
So we fast-forward until there's some semblance of action instead of people standing around talking, and come to a fight scene with all the action of junior-high kids insulting each other and having a shoving match. No wonder Catwoman looks so bored as she watches. The Batman guy continues to come across as an accountant, an accountant getting shoved around by a pudgy guy with a speech impediment, apparently due to his dry lips or something, perhaps because he's wearing a muzzle. Probably because he bites.
Then some other stuff happened - probably more complaining and shoving - but we missed it.
The Climax (1944)
Unsuspenseful musical with terrible music.
I hadn't heard of this film before, but thought it might be interesting because it starred Boris Karloff.
It wasn't. 3/10 is pretty generous.
Karloff plays some sort of doctor who doesn't like women who sing like his dead wife - I wouldn't either - and kills them.
There's about 10 seconds of moderate suspense - one brief scene - and about 30 minutes of god-awful warbling passed off as singing. We fast-forwarded over this "music" to avoid further pain. Perhaps B.K. should have tried this since it's easier than killing people who screech, er, sing, too loudly. There are some people who go to parties where the singing occurs, Boris watches from the sidelines. Oh yeah, hypnosis, too, but it didn't work. There might have been something near the end, but I fell asleep and missed it.
Game of Thrones (2011)
Pretty boring
SPOILERS probably.
It's mostly people in funny clothes gossiping about other people in funny clothes. Like the books! And they show people talking about action, rather than showing the action.
Which means they could skimp on the sets.
I watched a couple of episodes and wondered when they'd show a "wight" - then discovered that the "wight" was that tall guy in a long coat: I wish I'd known he was a wight, because then the tall guy in the long coat might have been scary.
It's too diffused, too many uninteresting sub-stories going on and too many characters who never seem to do much of anything. Except gossip about the other people who also don't do much of anything. Like the books!
Sons of Anarchy (2008)
Had to watch it because we hated it.
MAJOR SPOILERS.
My GF and I disliked the violent, totally dishonest and rather stupid characters (i.e., psychopaths) but "had to" watch the series anyway because we wanted to see them get what they deserved. Save yourself some time: they get away with everything. The acting and such was decent enough, the plots and dialog were pretty weak.
Their gang uniforms, apparently designed by little kids, always made me think of gas station attendants.
The interactions with police of any and all types were pretty comical and spoiled the series quite a bit, amounting to "Don't arrest them, they might not like it." Having the police watch them run out of an occupied church carrying shotguns and automatic rifles, and then disarm them, was no problem at all because the surveillance video wasn't very good...
The political correctness was pretty typical of Hollywood and detracted from the show: we kept expecting the tobacco-free, racially sensitive outlaws to attend some DNC wine tastings and have quiche at luncheon. They briefly had a black baby-sitter, but she disappeared as soon as their racial sensitivity was established.
The main bad guy in the show - the extra-bad bad guy - is - get ready - a real estate developer; they emit some sophomoric economic ideas as justification.
At the end of the series they're basically working for the CIA and pretending to be outlaws. They find out their main guy has killed some other members of their gang, but won't get revenge on him because they need him for the CIA work, and they don't want to get in trouble. Nobody important gets killed or permanently injured.