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viperine
Reviews
Looper (2012)
Without a doubt one of the most stupid films I've ever seen.
It was really, really awful, and I can't for the life of me understand why it's so highly rated. Nothing made sense. Nothing was thought through. Plot holes everywhere, story couldn't make up its mind about what it wanted to be, the future world was incredibly poorly realised and practically not even visible apart from insignificant, out-of-place elements such as hoverbikes and tiny, transparent cellphones.
The worst of it all, however, is the complete idiocy of how time travel worked. Apparently in the future you can't dispose of bodies, so you have to send them back 30 years (yeah, 30 - not back before the beginning of human civilization or anything, which would have been easier) to be killed and disposed of by someone there. Why send them back alive instead of killing them there and just sending the body back? We aren't told, so we're forced to suspend even more of our disbelief and assume you can't KILL anyone in the future, despite that not being what we're told. But then why are people in the future threatening each other with guns? What are they going to do if the target doesn't comply? Not to mention that later in the film they DO in fact shoot someone in the future, completely ruining the already terrible plot device that you can't kill there.
Why is everyone using civil war era firearms prone to jamming, when there are plenty of high tech weapons around in both eras? Must be some sort of honour or fashion thing among the loopers, right? Nope, Old Joe has no problem grabbing a couple of P90's at one point, which he of course drops after a few seconds of use, to go back to his trusty six shooter that already failed him once.
Oh, and without spoiling the story: If someone is coming to kill you and those you love, and you know that person can't track you but just knows where you are now, what do you do? If you answered "leave that place", you are smarter than any of the characters in this film.
|Slight spoiler|: The entire premise of the film is that character X is evil and must be stopped, because X is killing off the loopers. But the loopers are murderers - yet not a single person wonders if X may be doing a good thing by getting rid of them. No, we're supposed to accept it as obvious that someone getting rid of hired killers is evil.
These are just what I can remember off the top of my head, but not ten minutes went by during the film where my palm didn't come into contact with my forehead over some stupid, pointless or completely self-refuting brain fart. I've never seen anything pretending to be intelligent fail so hard at it.
Boys and Girls (2000)
Quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen
It seems I'm going against the stream here. Pretty much everyone else here seems to like this movie, although I really, REALLY can't possibly imagine why.
Until this day, I used to compare all crappy movies to "Isolation". A horrible attempt at a horror-movie, involving of all things a cow. But as of now, whenever I see a really bad movie, I'm going to think "Well, at least it wasn't as bad as Boys and Girls".
This movie is about... eh.. two people - a girl and a boy - who bump into each other at random places at regular intervals. And when they do, they start a boring conversation that usually ends with them disagreeing over something pointless, and parting again. These dialogs are not at all funny, not interesting, and most of the time, they don't make any sense at all.
The editing is also confusing. Entire years pass by in a cut without any indication hereof, other than the changing hairstyles of the characters. Several breakups take place, without you even knowing they were dating in the first place. And the shallowness - oh, the shallowness. You will hear dialog resembling: "So, I just got dumped. Are you still with your boy-/girlfriend, because if not, we can like hook up". And here I was, thinking romantic movies were supposed to have at least some romance.
So, no romance. And seeing as not a single sentence or scene in this movie was even remotely funny to me, I wouldn't call it a comedy either. And the drama kind of disappears when the dialog doesn't make sense, and the characters are impossible to sympathize with. That really leaves an hour and a half of absolutely NOTHING.
Watch at your own risk.
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
Unrealistic, but nice effects.
This has to be one of the most unrealistic war movies I've seen: Heat seeking missiles do several 180 turns (real life missiles burn out their fuel in a few seconds, and fly on inertia) Trained soldiers fire machine guns, sniper rifles and tank shells at the main character at close range, and not a single round hits him. American officers apparently have no clue what they are doing, and keep asking their subordinates silly questions. Explosions kill Serbs, but don't even scratch Americans standing at the same range.
The list goes on, and of course the story is told in the usual self-righteous way of American war movies. If you can divert from this or don't care about realism, then this movie is actually pretty good. Owen Wilson plays the role of the stranded navigator pretty well, and Gene Hackman is as always a shoe-in as the high-ranking officer, who seems cold and arrogant, but in time turns out to be human.
The visual effects are nothing short of great. Everything is kept in a chilling bluish color, mixed with the shaky and slightly disorienting camera style of Saving Private Ryan, which really makes you feel like you are there.
Overall it was a good movie with a disappointing ending. If you don't care about realism, it may be a whole lot better -- I'm just one of those people who can't help but notice.