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The Irishman (2019)
boilerplate mob film w/octogenarians
This was quite a boring an unnecessary movie. I agree with Scorsese that superhero movies are shallow but are your run-of-the-mill mafia movies much better? The plot here was very predictable and the actors are glaringly too old anyway. Plus, none of the characters are likable or even interesting. I expected something much better.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
boring fan service
This was kind of what I expected: fan service without any original idea or overall theme. It serviced the characters. It was like three mediocre episodes of Breaking Bad. I wasn't all that interested in the villains Breaking Bad ended up with and the earlier seasons had much better ones. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that this show had us stuck with a lot of the same one-dimensional characters from the last season. Everyone already knows going in that most of the interesting people are dead. It would have been better, perhaps, if it STARTED where it ended. I think this movie is more evidence of how quality has declined in this oversaturated market.
The Farewell (2019)
shallow, weak and cliché
I was surprised at how really unpleasant this film was. I think there were a lot of missing ingredients but mostly this movie relies on very familiar and unoriginal Hollywood storytelling devices. So, I felt like there was nothing original, vital or interesting happening on screen. There are no difficult questions here but there are a lot of bromides about east and west, family, Asia, etc. It's all predigested for today's audience which is perhaps not in the mood for anything uncomfortable or difficult. I have to say that the acting was really especially bad; they seemed like soap opera actors. However, the director doesn't help them out either. There are a bunch of scenes in which the actors are supposed to be reaching some dramatic moment but they just look like they're acting. That could be the director's fault or the weakness of the script too.
Happy Jail (2019)
Weird
This doc is pretty much a mess, though it is entertaining at times. It gives you a very real look into how ridiculous the politics are in the Philippines and how people seem to fail upwards on the institutional ladders. The authorities, including the consultant, are incompetent (the actual warden of the jail seems like a half-wit) and their critics are insincere and probably corrupt. The doc itself found lots of ways to waste time as it was obvious they didn't get a whole lot of substance from the inmates. Still, the events in the doc are so weird and absurd that you actually come away enlightened in spite of a lack of actual insight on the part of the filmmakers. I don't think the creators really knew what they wanted to say here and it shows. Besides the wish-washy nature of the final product here, the only drawback may be a very real wasted opportunity to show how miserable and broken the "justice" system is in the Philippines. They made it out to be a gossipy party-center. I bet most prisons in that country are worse than a nightmare especially considering you can spend years there without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom.
The Orville (2017)
derivative and a little clunky but it has heart
I'm not sure this really deserves 8 stars. Maybe not even 7 but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. This show could have easily fit into the Star Trek universe - which may be extremely obvious by now. There are good sides and bad sides to this fact. On the good side, it captures the spirit of Trek way better than Discovery (which I lost interest in very quickly). If you're a long time fan of Star Trek stuff like me, you might enjoy some of this. On the down side, it's unoriginal and unchallenging. And not only does it take cues from ST but it also borrows plot ideas from such shows as Firefly. So, this show is only original in some minor aspects. A second minus here is that some of the acting is clunky, especially from Seth MacFarlane. I feel like he'd benefit from having a coach on set. I gave this 7 stars because it had a lot of heart and is entertaining in small doses.
Ófærð (2015)
humorless people with miserable memories stuck in the snow
Most of the great TV shows in the U.S., including crime shows, contain some element of humor. This show, like a lot of British police dramas, will never cause you to crack a smile. Wit and irony are a signs of intelligence - and comedy is generally harder to do well than tragedy. Think of the best American dramas: True Detective S1 was frequently hilarious. Humor in Fargo is baked into the aesthetic. The Wire has me laughing at every turn and Deadwood was a laugh-out-loud experience. These are all shows that could be dark, dramatic and bloody. Anyway, as for this Icelandic offering: it's moody and morose with characters that have depressing backstories. Now-a-days, I guess audience are hungry for "character development," which to me means more like a soap opera. You get that in this show. Brooding characters who all have issues to jerk your tears - stuck together with a murder in their midst. I guess I'm out of step with the direction of TV. And forgive me if I think it's so much easier and lazier than it used to be.
Lady Bird (2017)
solid filmmaking
This is a coming of age tale. A Good film. Not great, like Linklater or Baumbach, but very good. I like the steadiness of this film. Gerwig resists being melodramatic or tacky and reaps rewards for her focus. Metcalf is excellent as always and the young actress is quite wonderful.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
overwrought pointless mess
I can't understand the acclaim this has received. I wanted to like this. It has a stellar cast. I just couldn't find anything to like about this movie besides the performances. I don't feel like the script was very good at all. This movie wanted to be a lot of things (mostly a Coen Brother's movie): a commentary on the red states, racism, guilt, revenge, violence in America, etc. I guess I can't fault the writer for wanted to achieve this kind of discourse. It's hard to really make something with depth and meaning. I can see why people wanted to like this, wanted to see these themes addressed and wanted to root for a picture with such talented performers. That's life though: sometimes we just fail. This movie failed.
Walking Out (2017)
poor film-making on every level
Flashbacks like an after-school special are the device of choice to force the audience to care about the characters...this backfires, of course. Perhaps there is a film out there using flashbacks that isn't this weak and insipid. It's not JUST that, offensive and hack-y as they are. One never gets behind these characters. The actors try but the script is poor. The writer writes conflict but never creates it. We cannot get behind them. But we are constantly reminded that we're supposed to be behind them and there is supposed to be some deep reality to their lives. It's maybe an American pitfall these days. Just tell a story why don't you? Don't try to make us care. We will care if you give us something to care about. But not everyone is Graham Greene. There are other jobs in Hollywood, after all.
Lane 1974 (2017)
a quiet cinematic success
Maybe there's not a lot of room out there for something rather "classic" like this. It reminds me of some good French cinema; very unAmerican. Think ontological realism. I'm a person who happens to like films in which not much happens on the surface. No great plot here. But this is a very honest film about lost childhood. The young actress is superb and this filmmaker has taken their time to see through a humble, careful, quiet vision. It's how life is lived. I was mesmerized and even moved by this atypical look at a "coming of age" of a sort.
Dunkirk (2017)
Uniquely conceived gripping success.
Some people want "character development." They want what Spielberg gives them. They want a soap opera. They want to be told what to feel and when. Character development means a kind of conventional story with a lot of familiar markers - it tells you whom to feel for and when and why. This is the stuff of Saving Private Ryan: it's hokey often, it doesn't push us too far out of comfort but it is designed to jerk those tears. I'm glad Dunkirk had a different vision, the kind of ontological realism that bypasses Hollywood conventions. This film is not about HUMANITY, really though it's intensely human, it's about war and the human experience of war. We are ants. It's luck and hope when hot metal comes raining from the sky or ambling through the surf. In a massive experience like Dunkirk, the people have not much power individually and the forces are gargantuan. To represent this one needs a vision, not a story or a soap opera, a vision. Dunkirk is unique certainly...gripping, overwhelming, powerful, and even beautiful though terrifying,
Lost (2004)
a mixed bag of good ideas, ponderous flashbacks and incoherence
It's very hard to review a series like this. It started out as a great idea with lots of fun features. However, it also may be responsible for lots of subsequent shows thinking that flashbacks are a good idea or good storytelling. Actually, I think flashbacks almost always cheapen TV or film and Lost is no exception. You don't lose anything by simply skipping the flashbacks entirely in the first few seasons. They're mind-numbing and really unwatchable for sure. Anyway, without the flashbacks Lost has some pretty fun stuff for the first two or three seasons. But the show does go downhill really sharply by the middle of its run. One quickly loses the sense that the writers have a plan or that the supernatural aspects of the show really ft together. Ad hoc is the best way to describe much of how the plot is written (ad hoc meaning that every story element after a certain point is tailored to service the plot at hand and doesn't end up fitting into a post hoc big picture). I'd like to warn people, without giving anything away, that this show has one of the worst endings of any show I've ever seen. If you're going to watch Lost, skip the flashbacks, you won't ever miss them, and don't get attached to the idea that you need to see it through to the end. I'd recommend giving up on it when you feel it coming apart (season 4 maybe?) without regrets. Lost had a great premise, some good characters, some interesting setups, and a few nice twists in the first couple of seasons. However, half the show is useless, ponderous, flashbacks and it jumped the shark halfway through it's run. Still, it's worth seeing half of the first half of its run.
La La Land (2016)
gem
This is a Gem. I've nothing profound to say here. Just that this kind of movie only gets made once or twice in a decade. It's the rare case when dance, song and story work together, along with talent, to make us smile and take us away. I can't imagine how a movie like this gets made in this day and age. So much has to come together. This is the kind of movie I shall wait a few years before seeing again. I want it to fade from view so I can enjoy it all over again. One thing: see it in the theater if you still can. If this came back to the movie theater, I would definitely go back. If you cannot see it in the theater, watch it loud and dim the lights!
Arrival (2016)
very weak sci-fi offering
When there's a consensus that something is really good, I can usually find the good in it. That is not the case with this clunker. I do not know what this movie is about. I mean, what it's ABOUT. Time? Well, it talks about time. It took up some of my precious time. I know they want me to think it's profound. But I just didn't see any THERE there. It's supposed to be about the arrival of aliens. I think this is also reaching towards being about memory. Yet it doesn't have anything important to say about that either. It does do one thing that I hate 99% of the time, and maybe this is what the movie is really about: flashbacks. Since this is the cheapest trick in TV - and even some movie franchises are built around them, maybe the idea here was just to make a movie about that and write a story about an alien landing around it. Nothing really happens in this barely moving movie anyway. What a clunker!
Victoria (2016)
fairly bad
I can't really emphasize enough how shallow, boring, silly, poorly written and annoying this show is. They can dress up these actors in colorful velvets and gold buttons, and stuff them into lushly carpeted castles all they want, but this will not make up for a lack of vision, message, theme, and perspicacity. Victoria complains a lot, yes she does. She's bored and put upon, annoyed by being pregnant, by her nagging mother, by puppy love, and other such trifles, and dramatic music comes along to make her boring boredom supposedly seem dramatic and important. But nothing important ever really happens. These characters hang about. The days go by. They complain. Politicians drop by to bother them about insubstantial minutia that never resonates or ties together into an interesting plot. Victoria doesn't think or talk about all that much...doesn't DO all that much. She and Albert love each other but it's hard to see why. The actor playing Albert always seems ready to drift into a nap mid-sentence. The actor playing Peel is particularly miscast. Victoria and Melbourne are played well enough but they are hobbled by the shallowness of what is asked of them. Finally, the "B-stories" are a particular slap in the face to the viewer. Taking their cue from Upstairs and Downton the writers made a feeble and slapdash effort to get us interested in a cook and a maid servant - to no avail. They might as well be singing, "la la la, we're here to say something, until the main characters return to the screen... la la la." The main characters are not much better. It's really hard to care about them and it is easy to forget that they supposedly represent such important symbols/figures of an age. They might just be some boring people living in a house if someone didn't take a shot at them once in a while. No spoiler here. We know from history books that Queen V lived to a ripe old age. However, someone should have put this costume clunker out of it's misery.
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
wasted cast
This really is a very nice cast. It's too bad the producers/writer/director lack in vision. This is about defeating and evil foe: coming out of the gate with action sequences and spending the final act the same way. Again, it's a waste of a cast. They're charming performers: especially the actors that play Spock, Kirk, Scotty and Bones. It's no small feat to perform well the roles created by legends. Quinto deserves a lot of praise for doing a nice job with the role Nimoy made larger-than-life. It's just sad what this reboot has been and has become. These are not films that are built to last or become classics. They're built to play well for a few weekends in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, L.A. and Hong Kong. They won't inspire a new generation of Trekkies as they miss the essence of what Star Trek is all about. There's nothing to grab onto here except the cast: no moral center, no ethical dilemma, no exploration or new ideas and worlds, no sense of real adventure: Just defeating an evil foe in glorious space-chases and explosions. What is supposed to be exciting is decidedly boring and even tedious. Nothing to see here. Except a cast going to waste. But hey: they doubled their budgetat the box so I'm not holding my breath for something better. If I were in charge, I'd half their budget. Try spending more time on the writing and less money on effects. Maybe give it to someone like Joss Whedon...
Dark Matter (2015)
Hacky
I watched some of the first season but gave up about halfway through. I wanted to tune in to see if S2 improved at all. After 10 minutes of the first E of S2 I turned it off. This is a really lazily written show. They use stock clichéd dialogue and the characters are flat and dry as toast. On top of that, they seems to spend most of their energy on silly little "karate" fight scenes. It is also unimpressive when it comes to its design. All in all, it seems like TV has devolved from its heyday a few years back. One dare not mention this show in the same sentences as sci-fi shows from ten or 15 years ago. OK, sentence finished: this show is to Battlestar Galactica as stale pop tarts are to fresh tiramisu from your favorite Italian restaurant. It's not even in the same network of olympic facilities as Firefly. This show runner has no vision. The writing staff is hacky too. I'm sorry there are no good science fiction TV shows on TV these days.
Defying Gravity (2009)
The difference between a coffee shop and a space mission
Well, what's the difference between working in a coffee shop (no offense, I've had the job myself) and working on a NASA space ship? Um, according to this show there is none - as far as personality-types and life-dramas go. Why would NASA send such a bunch of fools on a space mission? Or let such a fool run the mission? They wouldn't and they don't. This show is not only unrealistic, it's pretty darn inane. It assumes that audiences tuning into a space exploration show want to spend half the time watching the characters in flashbacks prancing around swimming pools and locker rooms. When they do get to the ship, again, you get the feeling that they could have just as easily made the setting a coffee shop. Instead of systems failure, it could be that the latte machine is on the fritz. We could change "Donner get back to the ship. Donner, do you copy?!?!?!" to "Donner come out of the bathroom!!! Donner, customers are waiting!!!" We could change "do you always have to leave marks on my neck" to...Oh, that we can just leave the same! This show has a surprising amount of defenders here. Someone even said that the reason the characters are such tools are that "beta" wanted it that way. Well, that is a pretty neat excuse! No offense guys. We all have our guilty pleasures. I just don't see it. And I'll watch some pretty flawed stuff (Terra Nova, Caprica, SGU) so I have a high tolerance for imperfect sci-fi. I'm sorry but Defying Gravity is just downright awful. But someone should try this type of thing again with much better writer/producers (perhaps the Mars Trilogy).
Elizabeth (1998)
silly
This is tripe. It is silly, boring and badly written. It disrespects the viewer and that is unforgivable. It is rife with historical inaccuracies, none of which are in the service of good story-telling. There is no excuse for this type of shallow film-making. There is an audience for good and faithful historical drama. The real events are certainly much more interesting and dramatic than this made up drivel. This is film-making at its weakest. If you're looking to learn something, avoid this film. If you're looking for fun, avoid this film. There's just nothing redeeming about it. The Helen Mirren TV movie is much better.
Our Town (1940)
garbage
This movie is garbage. It's dog poop. Worse, it's an affront to all of Thornton Wilder's ideas. I'm generally against burning books and "art" in general. However, if I were Mr. Wilder, I would have encouraged a campaign to incinerate all copies of the film. Let's make a version of Anna Karenina in which she doesn't throw herself onto the tracks, shall we? Or, how about a version of Sentimental Education in which Frederic and Marie get together at the end? If you understand what Wilder was saying in the play, then it's easy to see how truly outrageously bad this movie was. All this is leaving aside the bad acting and over-aged actors (not Mr. Holden's finest hour)!
Kamome shokudô (2006)
terrible!
I have to agree with Shusei: This director isn't very concerned with cinema. The film doesn't speak to Japan's great cinematic history in any way. But the director is obviously very satisfied with herself. This film is emblematic of Japan's contemporary fetishism and myopia. It displays, unknowingly, a lot of the problems plaguing artistic and media discourses in Japan. There is a general sense of shallowness and lack of awareness that one notices if one is able to sit through this tripe. You get the Japanese constant and bizarre fascination with food, the lack of irony, the fetishization of and yet total disdain for and other-ing of all things "not Japanese," plus, you will observe the ghettoization and, again, fetishizing of a gender-group. This is very much a movie that is unselfconsciously and unwittingly by and for Japanese unmarried desexualized middle- aged "ladies" - a demographic distinction that is a kind of stigma created by the dysfunctions and pathologies of modern Japanese society. The film imagines that these Japanese "ladies" can escape their marginalization and branding in Japanese society while existing in a safe magical "foreign" world that is, obviously, anything but what life would be like if one moved and started a business in a foreign country. In this sense, the movie is both a product of and for masochistic Japanese propaganda.