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The Killer (2023)
What did I just see?
I watched this movie with my 14 year old son and none of us understood this movie.
I loved the acting. Michael Fassbender was excellent and I liked that the fighting scenes were more realistic than much of what you see these days in movies.
I also have to hand it to the beauty of the cinematograhy.
But it all can't make up for the fact that neither me or my son ever understood what was going on.
"Who's that guy?"
"Why is he in that house now?"
"Why does she have to underline, that she is not an evil person?" "Is she evil?" "Why'd he have to kill her?"
Plenty more questions, but I won't bore you with them. I can only tell you, none of them were answered. Not even the final plot made a shadow of sense to anything.
I remember I sort of had the same feeling 30 years ago when I saw Pulp Fiction the first time. I had no idea what just happens, which is even weird to write, since I love that movie now.
Maybe I have to see this a few more times, but where Pulp Fiction actually made some sense along the way (even the first time) and totally redeemed itself the second time I saw it (and the third and the fourth and so on...), this movie doesn't even intice me to see it again. There is nothing there, that I want to have answered by seeing it again. Pulp Fiction had ounces of that.
Englemageren (2023)
Wow, that was a bad one
Let me start by saying I actually saw the whole movie and that is the only reason I'm giving it two stars. I sometimes just quit, but they had me thinking along the way; hey this might be very interesting.
But the acting (and directing) was of another planet. And not a good one. It was absolutely cringeworthy. Not believable in any scenes at all.
The script was loaded with stupidities like: How are two people - one of them not even close to being fit for police work and the other quite a helpless dude - left working on a case with a mass murderer on the lose? Why aren't they backed up by a ton of police people when they find out where the murderer is? Two people on the mass murderer case has to be enough, right?
And how does the murderers skinny mum 1) capture three grown ups in three different places - one of them a police man - 2) carry them all into a car or a truck, 3) carry them out nicely and place them on the ground outside the crowded facility she is running, not tied to anything, and 4) have them stay there while she picks up one more victim? She has to be gone for at least an hour, but still they just sit there on their knees waiting to get killed or whatver else they might suspect could happen.
Are we sure no one sees them there? The women inside has a tendency to look out the window a lot in the other scenes, but not while all this is going on. In the final scene we even see a person in the back ground moving along. I thought: it must be a person about to enter the scene, but no, it was just an amateur film shoot with a Director not yelling "cut, cut, cut. Please remove the person at the back and let's go again". At least that person could have heard or seen them for the hour (or whatever) the murderers mum was gone.
And why the f... is the main character not just trying to shoot the mum when she is handed the gun? She has at least two bullets. Why should herself instead of just the killer? There's a fair chance she knows nothing about whether the bullet would go all the way through herself. If she knew a lot about the particular gun she is handed and is aware of exactly the bullet it's loaded with, she probably would be a good shooter, and had she been a good shooter, she would have killed the mum almost instantly without shooting herself. There's plenty of opportunity.
And what about the revealing of the killer? I was guessing along: "could it be the husband? No, because he is dark skinned and the murderer is visibly caucasian. Could it be the medical examiner? No, he is a little too old - on the videos he sends in the murderer appears younger by his moves and the shape of his body. And so on.... " I was in the dark - we never met the murderer in civil (or any other instance without the mask) untill he was outed.
The killer calls the main character "Englemager" in the scene where he gets shot, so why the hell doesn't he shoot her in the scene where he shoots the third victim and "Englemager"? Stupid is, stupid does, I suppose.
I'm sure there are a lot more plot holes, but this has to do it. Don't waste your time on this. The only positive thing probably is that the movie has the usual "glittery" sort of Netflix look to it. I don't know if that is actually enough for anybody, but the photographer's and the color grader is not to blame.
Danny Collins (2015)
Feel good movie of the year
I so, so enjoyed this movie. Al Pacino is absolutely charming and so are everyone else in this perfectly instructed and perfectly cast little movie pearl. Even the child actress is convincing and perfectly adorable. I more or less watched the movie per accident, but I enjoyed every moment. A big smile on my face for most of the movie. I hadn't heard of the movie before and I still don't know Steve Tilston, but in this case I didn't need to know about the person it's all about, because the movie is so charming. The dialogue and the ping pong between Pacino and the other cast members is amazing. Especially with Annette Bening. Bening absolutely swipes me of my feet, by the way... Thank you very much for this little surprise!
Smuk (2022)
Terrible
Now I'm no movie maker and this is only my second review so I can't claim to be a good critique either, but I can't recommend watching this movie at all. One of the story lines seems relevant these days; How to behave yourself online, but the rest of this is a complete waste of time. The acting is the worse I have seen in many years in a "serious" movie. I blame both the instructor and the cast themselves. Most are relatively new at this and even though one or two of them showed glimpes of hope in one or two scenes, most of the scenes were horrible when it comes to the acting and the instructional work. You don't act well just because you can produce a tear in the right moment. The lines were delivered with robotics, the reactions to most of the lines were automatic and extremely unreliable. You never doubted any lines to be scripted and felt that the script was just read out loud. It honestly looks as though there were no instructions of the actors inbetween takes, just read your lines perfectly and let's go to the next scene. So why not 1 star? Well, I actually felt the camera work and scenery was fine and the settings in general good. So the quality of the techinical stuff was up to what I would call Netflix level, but not the rest.