AndresBorghi Reviews

Sucker Punch (2011)

Bring a script please!

[5/10 · 24 March 2011]

SPOILERS AHEAD!

I'm from Argentina and here this movie was premiered today, one day before the rest of world.

Sucker punch has great action, production and music but there's one big problem which is the same problem many many directors and producers and filmmakers in general keep doing: The script is BAD.

Today I learned that not even Zack Snyder can save a bad script.

The main character gets confined to a mental asylum for reasons that stop being important once she is inside (for the rest of the movie). There, she flashes a weird burlesque world slightly related to the real world. and there, she flashes another world which is pure fantasy. This flashy third world has the cool action that we want to see. sadly it doesn't work at all, since nothing there makes sense. She finds suddenly turned into a super powered chick who fights robots, Nazis, dragons and samurais. Who are them? nobody. Why does she fight them? No reason. What if she loses the fight? We don't know. Who gives a damn then about them? Well, not me. Of course, after we start to see that her actions there mean something in the real world (actually it's not the real world either) but it's already too late. We see the first fight without caring about it since it doesn't have a background at all. And that transfers to all the rest.

Some of the actors were good but many of them have the problem of having to act a scene that makes no sense at all and that hurts their performances really bad. The perfect example of this is the doctor that lobotomizes her, having to repeat the "there was a creepy look in her eyes" speech like 5 times to make the audience believe it.

It's sad that all those good action scenes fell flat for the lack of story. When I saw the first action scene versus the samurais (the best one by far) I thought: "Man!! if I had this one action scene alone at the end after a great movie with good characters I'd been totally happy. No need for more action than this in a well constructed movie." of course, I was able to think that so early cause the fatal flaw of the movie was all exposed already.

Aniway. Nice action and nothing else.

Plague Town (2008)

Talent over low budget and inexperience

[7/10 · 22 June 2009]

I checked here at IMDb before watching this film and I saw it had a 5 stars rating. So I watched it thinking it was gonna be a streaming pile. I'm glad to say this movie is great. If the director reads this then I congratulate you my friend.

I'll explain.

Plague town has the classic "people goes to weird village on vacation and ends up being attacked by creepy villagers" script, but it's so well executed that the story becomes unique. It's not only that the film has a very low budget but also the inexperience of the director comes to evidence most of all in the action scenes or in many of the deaths but that's no problem since the talent of the guy succeeds over those limitations. It's the first time I'm watching a film and it reminds me of the original The evil dead. that's right! many many many many films have tried to be like the evil dead and failed. I think this one succeeds because it achieves the exact same goal: You can see the lack of budget or experience and yet you enjoy the film. It's a matter of having talent an take your picture seriously. Just like Sam Raimi did in his first film. I've seen hundreds of films that put a bunch of retarded teenagers and some weird being/s trying to kill them just because The Evildead did so. But they don't take it seriously, they think that making it stupid, funny and gory is a sure path to succeed in horror. And that's a fail since to achieve that you have to be not only a master of horror but also a master of comedy.

So, anyway, I congratulate David Gregory for his movie and I hope he continues making films. He is not an excellent director but goes in the right path to be one!

Inland Empire (2006)

Only for Lynch fans.

[4/10 · 27 October 2008]

I haven't seen all David Lynch's film. I've only seen Mullholland drive and Lost Highway and I've found them to be pretty good. It happened to me that when I decided to start watching them without trying to understand what was happening I started to enjoy them. they have really interesting uses of the cinematographic language and a great development on suspense and intrigue. So when i got to watch Inland Empire i thought: OK, this time I won't understand it either, so let's enjoy the wild ride into the dark worlds of Lynch.

Sadly it wasn't that way. Basically, knowing that I wouldn't understand any of the plot I was just expecting this film to entertain me like those previous two did. But it just didn't work for me. I found some interesting things like how Lynch makes some kind of circular situations where some elements previously presented come again in scene much later to remind you that you are seeing is other part of the things you already saw. Sadly this time didn't work for two reason: the first one was because I've already seen that in his previous movies and this time it didn't surprise me; and the second one is that in this movie I really didn't find a meaning or reason for those "cicles". Basically I was again seeing the same element in a new scene but with no meaning for me, like: "remember that house you've seen before? well, here is again in another point of view". But it means nothing to me. Maybe I just never got what was going on or where was the movie going to.

Like I said I just expected this movie to entertain me or thrill me or make me wonder about that dark world presented by Lynch. But it just bored me. I could resume most of the movie as: Crazy characters speaking nonsense all the time and the lead actress watching them like "WTF is he talking about?". Really, she is most of the time with a expression of confusion in her face.

Aniway, this movie is ONLY FOR HARDCORE LYNCH FANS which I'm sure will find it more attractive than I did.