unpopicakbill Reviews

Baieti Destepti (2023)

0/10

[1/10 · 5 June 2024]

This is worse than watching adds in a language one does not speak. There is no reason to give it a 1 star, it should be at max 0, but it clearly is aimed at decreasing the viewer's IQ.

It feels the movie was not filmed with double-takes, just the first runs, as the lines delivered like actors picked up on the night bus lanes. The screenplay is lacking, the ideas are lacking, it is pure junk.

I'm sure nobody cared about how the movie would be seen, except if it is better than a live impromptu performance with a theme of police/mafia...

I'm sure there are worst movies, there is no low bar there, but this is clearly not needed in the human life.

The amount of unneeded movie scenes, vulgarities, product placement, and knee-jerk reactions is the absolutely amazing for a movie this short.

It would have been a real plus if actors, directors, and screenplay writers would just be people taken off the street.

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Plastic semi-fantastic

[5/10 · 22 May 2024]

The expectations here were high, starting from a 8/10 mark, I hoped to see a deep story, with character development, and given the high mark on the CGI I would have hoped to see truly masterpiece rendering of the historical period. But what you get, dialogue from a 3rd grade book, with depth of your average cartoon, historical inaccuracies, cheap characters, little story development, all within the consecrated story, but even that done half-heartedly.

I think the movie was done on the cheap, and not necessarily on putting full-screen CGI moving battle scenes, but from the research, work, scripting, screenplay, putting the stories, the drama, the fights together. It all feels like a Steven Seagal-depth movie.

I would not advise it for anyone not into Indian SF movies.

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

Dated to hell and back

[5/10 · 17 April 2024]

This production seems for many viewers here to be still very actual, and I beg to differ. It gives way to the bickering and rumor mongering, religious fanaticism and cheap morals and to take precedence over the real analysis of morals, in a pure humanistic sense. The whole experience is cheapened by involving a third party in the "devil" to take over proper freewill decision making, and gives a cover for debauching into immoral activities, which by themselves are not immoral, unless the criminal acknowledges them as such, not to mention that it supports violence against children, closed-mindedness and equals pleasure with sin.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Half-wit driver of the killing industrialization

[9/10 · 2 April 2024]

This movie is not about objectivity, it can't be it talks about the radishes, the bike, the toys, the garden, the kayak trip, whilst having as the back drop the Auschwitz extermination camp going at full speed, or even looking to "improve" the killing machine.

The pressure is there, the horror is present, it is palpable, with the characters aiming to kick away from the present, or bringing in the killing industrialization into their safe world.

The presentation of the human relationships into godly adulation, peers/work, family/warm, and overlooking the invisible humans, hurts the most.

The other side stories (girl planting food, or museum) are somehow a detraction from the immersion in the monster's universe.

All in all, a subjective view could not give any low mark to this production. Seen in a couple hundred years this would so remote and unrelatable that it may only be seen objectively.

1944 (2015)

Great visuals and a new angle to WWII

[7/10 · 18 March 2024]

The Estonian story of WWII was never told to me before, so this was the attraction point for me to see this one.

To dissect the movie - it has great visuals, great war scenes, way too many for a 100 minute movie, but this is the point; it has a fairly loose story, mostly held through history, not through characters or their development, or through dialogue; on the other side the music is sordid, not befitting a serious movie, and comes as cheap and cheapening the over all art.

For comparison to Russian war movies, it lacks all the poetry, and in comparison to German war movies, it lacks the character building, but it does give grit and endurance through the hopelessness of the overall war fighting for no reason except to kill or not be killed, so in this sense it stands much more against war.

Nunta Pe Ban (2023)

Horrible

[2/10 · 23 February 2024]

There is a series of movies from these guys, there should be a lower bracket of what movies should be allowed to be released to public. This movie should not make the cut,

The story is simple, not necessarily bad, but acting is from horrid to horrible, the lines are drawn by the lead actor, or somebody surely not formed in a screenwriting class, coming from instagram and cultural aspects (which is the form over reality comedy here), are so exaggerated, so over the top, and so much repeated they feel cringing.

So all in all, watching this should lead one to drop the other productions from the same group, but I urge the viewer not to discard the Romanian movies in whole, as there are quite a few gems.

12th Fail (2023)

A very good Indian movie, local class

[6/10 · 4 February 2024]

Most of the Indian movies one gets to see in his life taste of plastic, fake reality and abound in the fantastic, whilst aiming to still keep the viewer emotionally overengaged. Not this one, surely it makes the normal effort into a journey, and creates an achievement from the norm, but is a much less violation of ones expectations, and somehow can make into the poetical freedom a director can take with its work.

It is a well rounded movie, under the Indian class, but that should not demean it in the global market. So I would think it is a new drama on the underdog fight in the intellectual world of reaching to be a Police officer.

This may not be a lot for the Western viewer, but it is quite an achievement for the Indian viewer, and story delivers.

Negatives - the dialogue comes pre-chewed and stale, character development is expected from the get go, the story generalizes the good and the bad, which it delivers at biblical proportions, with some revenge, backlash and abuse, all requested for the movie to work.

Mihai Viteazul: Printul Intrat In Legenda Europei (2022)

Abuse over history

[2/10 · 1 February 2024]

This is a brutal misappropriation of a heroic historical position. This comes at the time where what we call today Romanians, were called Vlah/Moldovean/Ardelean, and Romanorum was used until very recently for what we call today Byzantines. All in all it is a misuse of the historical figure of Mihai Viteazul/cel Viteaz (the Great), as a figure uniting a nation that did not exist for another quarter of a millennium.

The movie is a joke in representing the past, but it serves as a somewhat expected depiction of one would expect in hindsight to be said about him today, to serve for the future.

The documentary overlay is not balanced, but can reveal a few facts for one to start digesting on the really outstanding profile of the hero. In the appropriated history of what is now known as Romania, Mihai stands out as one of the five huge personalities (possibly the greatest?) that shaped the course of European history by people speaking a Romanian language and acting in the Balkans.

Montevideo: Taste of a Dream (2010)

Old plastic not fantastic

[3/10 · 31 January 2024]

I'm sure people who voted for this movie were emotionally invested in it for reasons not coming from the art of film making. Because what one gets is a movie poorly constructed, so poorly acted that it feels plastic, with historical goofs too many to be worth listing, overdramatizing to the point turning one stomach over, empty dialogue ... it comes so close to Bollywood B-class movies that it hurts, even having the all musical intermezzos.

In the end it was made, and people from the ex-Yugoslav countries surely liked it enough, but I can't see how this could be ever considered a real movie anywhere else in the world.

I have great respect for the Yugoslav film making, but this is only a shade of that.

K.G.F: Chapter 1 (2018)

Hard to say anything good here

[2/10 · 21 January 2024]

It is a movie, not unlike C-like movies from Hollywood, just wrose acting, worse filming, worse lines, and overinflated hero egos over indian music. And I din't go into the romantic part of it, which start with hospitalizing 20 men, for the pleasure of the hero which wants to force reign over the girl.

It comes clear that ethics prophesized here same men-led world one would expect. Garbage.

Pure garbage, no story, no way to relate to it unless you're 5, nothing to learn, nothing to look up to.

In the end it is here and for some backstreet guys in South Asia will find this amusing enough, but for it to be rated above 3.5\10 is unrealistic.

The Christmas Gift (2018)

Sa moara Nicu

[8/10 · 17 January 2024]

For a Romanian that was just 7 at the time of this action, this story reads incredibly true, and delivers hell in a world where hell was almost everywhere to be found.

Reading would deliver you into "Classified Books", Listening to radio would end up on "Radio Free Europe", TV watching would get you on some "video cassette", meeting friends would drop "jokes about the system, the party or Ceausescu", or even worse, "complotting to overthrow the system", travelling or just going about (only in Romania was available) would deliver you into "meeting with dangerous elements", so why wonder that even writing to Santa (already replaced by Mos Gerila - Santa Blizzard) could give a family serious time in jail, no economic opportunities for the rest of their lives and maybe even a "disappearance".

It may be harder for the new generation to taste it, but for me it delivered a punch the nose.

The Second Game (2014)

For what reason?

[1/10 · 16 January 2024]

I'm sure there is a reason for this to exist, I just didn't find it myself, as someone coming from the wider public, and having an aim that I will have some crop at the end of investing 100 minutes of my time.

As I stand now, there is no crop, there is no outcome. There is only two guys, both with invested interests, watching a football match, poorly filmed, nothing notable even on the football lovers.

This tells the viewer nothing, it's just a personal discussion between the director, of Romanian fame, and his father, a referee, acting in the actual match. There is no dialogue depth, no revealing facts, no football energy, no need for this to exist.

Use this to save 100 minutes of your life.

It Takes Two to Fence (2013)

Bland story

[5/10 · 16 January 2024]

What makes this story worth telling? If a plain story get on the silver screen it does so, because it's worthy, and this one lacks anything stellar, in effect is very simple.

So when you want to tell a simple story, you need to hook the audience through actors, through dialogue, through music, through image. The actors are ok, the dialogue is subpar, music and image are side-dish, nothing much coming out of them.

The film fails not because it's bad, as so many others, but because it is not good, does not have an edge on it -- and how much could have been delivered through fencing!! -- and if comes out as bland, little to stick with after it has ended.

Mai presus de orice (1978)

Propaganda riding drama

[5/10 · 16 January 2024]

The movie makes a docudrama of the 1977 earthquake in Bucharest into a communism propaganda for the efforts of the teams working in an hero-mode to save the trapped people, of the working class subject to such an unjust fate, to the organization of a nation's different organization (military, firefighters, miners, doctors, municipal administrators, people of all walks of like) around a nation-wide project to reconstruct the damaged buildings into a new shining city, and ending into a very deferential presentation of the heroes of the nation - the Communist Kapos - the Ceausescus.

Unfortunately, it taints a real drama, a real opportunity to talk about the real people and their take on the dramatic event, into a communist take on reconstructing the nation into a better self through joint efforts, for the betterment of each and every. Missing out the fact that in the end, there were clear shots of the "more equal" heroes of the nation, the nomenclaturists.

Brancusi from Eternity (2014)

Untargeted, unfocused, unstoried, unneeded and not to be seen

[2/10 · 11 January 2024]

My guess is that the best part of this movie is the title, and even in this the only part of the title that means someting is "Brâncusi". The rest of the word play, aspired to something, that is neither needed, nor in a story lines that at least could aim to meet in between them.

This should be a movie about an artist that stands for deep heartfelt art, and some portions of the man behind it. But it turned out to be a kitsch product, from the kitsch story line, through kitsch screen play, kitsch scenes, kitsch filming, kitsch decor, kitsch lines, and even worse punch lines, awful acting, for awful aims, all in an amateur manner. I'm trying to find something to redeem the existence of this, but I can't, I just can't.

I've seen worse, but for worse aims, this was meant for something higher, and the output is less than dirt.

I'm Not Famous But I'm Aromanian (2013)

It could have been worse

[3/10 · 8 January 2024]

... though, but not by much.

Aromanians, are the Latins/Greek of the Balkan peninsula, that have not been captured within Romania, Greece or Italy, and themselves are representative for the Byzantine empire, that has not changed to Greek, nor have wanted to become Westerners, by importing more mainstream Western Latin such as French and Italian in Romania. As minority across many geographies, it is tight knitted group. So all in all, their story could have been a great trip both in culture and experience, which it tried, but in a too much theatrical way, in a truly Balkan manner.

But the movie is almost pure junk, the acting is C-quality, although some actors have some movie experience, the story is really a fourth-grader, the soundtrack is hurting even for C-class Bollywood movies, the scenes are filmed by wedding videomans (and not the good ones), the dialogues seem to have come to mind after the start of the scene filming.

I'm sure many have seen already some masterpieces of Romanian film making, but this is not one.

So except for getting exposure to a Byzantine culture or for being one of the community, there is no real reason to see this.

I was expecting more, a lot more.

Far from Here (2017)

Home is where the scene has a reason

[5/10 · 5 January 2024]

If in a film there is a scene that has no reason, there is no scene, and in extrapolation, there is no film. This film has great potential, it has good potential, it has potential, and it ends up still holding it, but not realizing it.

The story is that of too many modern couples in the true middle class, where both are involved in the economic life, and none are involved in the family building, or at "home", irrespective where the address of that lies. But to make a film out of a good idea seems to elude the director here, the screenwriter, as well as not hitting home with the main male character, which comes across as trying too hard, and having himself missing the memo on how to deliver the drama.

All in all is not as bad as it seemed midway through, but to me it massively underdelivered to the implied value that it could have with such as good overall story.

My advice is to skip this one, unless for the above average delivery of the female character.

Separately, the fact that it was a low budget, still came across for the portrait of the business work, activity and afterwork, this though, it's a minor failure in the big picture.

Arest (2019)

A video monument to the victim (and the torturer) in the Communism

[9/10 · 28 December 2023]

I write this review after this movie haunted me for a couple of months to do so, and I mean it in the literal way!

The movie tells an easy story of terror during Communist Romania, where a system disposes of a victim, but it tells is from the very personal point of view of the cell in which the relationship between the victim and the torturer takes place.

I did stop multiple times to tell myself that this story cannot be true, and every time I found evidence that up to half a million people went part of the ways told by the movie.

It is incredible to see the mind-less, heart-less and absurd system of torture put on film, as it is depicted by very realistic characters, with a focus on achieving other minor motives, but keeping life going.

A must see film, with the warning that it won't be pretty, but such life was! And we hope not to make it again.

Between Pain and Amen (2019)

Very important subject, given an below expected chance to shine

[7/10 · 20 December 2023]

The story is real, the facts were real, the situation was a massive Romanian pogrom which was executed in the manner one hears coming from USSR/Russia, China or North Korea. The story was framed nicely, with a first dramatic line that holds well, in the development and character of the main character, and its relations with his alter ego living with his wife, the brother, the priest and other prison inmates. It comes with some other undertones - stories in background, most of them detracting from the seriousness of the presented situation, but I will not give away some of it.

Major cons of the movie are the acting of the main character which is very believable in the negative instances, but hardly believable in the upside scenes, some other poor acting, poor framing especially on the wide frames and the drone shots.

All in all it should received a better movie, a better cast, a clearer storyline, and it could have done more right to the situation.

5Gang (2019)

Wow! wow! I've seen this

[1/10 · 4 December 2023]

I started to see it the previous week, I thought it was just a waste, but completing it a week later, I realized that there is some deprecation value in this garbage.

Once you see it, you start appreciating the creative effort one needs to put in toothpaste ads, and radio jingles. And I'm grateful for that.

Separately, this "production" (it is not a movie/film), it is a product of and for the failures of this generation, and as such, it has a value to identify these characters, all in one place. This is the value I was mentioning earlier.

This being said, I would not want to further bad mouth these guys, and wish them irrelevance and more of what they have, and ideally to have a separate category listing, so it would be easier to keep away from their products.

Oppenheimer (I) (2023)

An alright movie with a horrid soundtrack

[7/10 · 27 November 2023]

If one thinks will see a movie, will do so only by turning the sound off and reading the subtitles, otherwise you will end up with a mismatched concerto aiming to keep you on the edge of the seat for every political move in the story. At least the story is not botched, although I think one needs to have read a few books on Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, McCarthy just to get into the grips of the problematic and the underlying politics.

Unfortunately the music ruins the story, tries to make from a drama a thriller. So until a toned down / no soundtrack version appears, I think this comes into the string of poorly edited movies that trade in a remarkable story that should stay for the long term, for the hype of the movie watching today, but making the material completely forgettable.

Golani (2017)

No need

[1/10 · 24 October 2023]

I'm sure in some obscure alternate universe there is a reason for this movie being made. I'm sure the actors felt great starring in a full length movie, and being part of the art of cinematography.

The reality is dismal, there is no movie, there is some flow of scenes, like headless chicken in a slaughterhouse, under a scenario that can't fill in for a 30-seconds ad, with performances that make any tiktoker feel like having a raison d'etre in the movie world.

I saw it, because I had it, do I want anyone else to repeat that? Sure not, please be afraid. If you are not one of the guys acting here, and a direct friend, there is not reason under the sun to be on this page.

Immaculate (2021)

A movie for the human reality disconnected ones

[6/10 · 23 October 2023]

It's hard to say anything major about the movie, as it follows the main character flowing through the gates and posts of life, without putting almost any opposition other than sometimes stopping if unpleasant. "No" is not a part of the vocabulary, principles have no standing as a rational position to defend, rather they all give in to life, to existence, to pleasure and to diminish the pain, and not in a rational way, rather in a naturalistic, animal way. Is this movie relevant for us? Sure, but who would want to contemplate much rational thought to the bodily choices? Surely the director, but other wise, is seems like a lost cause for the wider public, but interesting enough for one ride.

Puzzle (2013)

This is not a Puzzle is a Stew

[3/10 · 13 October 2023]

The pieces don't fall into place, it's just a Hodge-podge of potentially good ideas for a full feature movie thrown in together with bad acting, bad camera, bad lines, in a soup of anticlimaxes.

I fear this movie is not representative for anyone or anything, standing for too much, almost to the point of not caring for anything, in a manner akin to clinic bipolarism.

The stories themselves could have merit, and with good acting, a screenwriter and a director, could amount to something, but as they are, left to themselves, it's hard to categorize this as a movie.

No need to watch, unless a close family member plays in it.

Bad TV movie warning!

Charleston (2017)

Turning two elephants in a china shop

[8/10 · 17 August 2023]

In my simplistic view I see this gem as severely underrated. The reasons are multiple, but there are surely things that are lacking. And I would start with them, the movie builds to some too dramatic points, in a manner probably only digestible to Romanian culture, thus missing some international recognition.

Otherwise, the story is great, heart felt, deeply relatable for all people that had been in a three-wheel story, healing in nature, via its comedic situations, creating space for characters to both grow in, and the for the viewer to have time to accommodate to the awkward feelings.

A strong recommendation for a top 200 Romanian movies.