chunkmeal2 Reviews

Sense8 (2015–2018)

Incredibly slow and boring

[4/10 · 11 June 2023]

Might've been good if each season were a 2h movie.

Imagine what The Matrix would've been like if it had been a 12 hour long TV series. You'd get endless boring filler material exploring in great detail each individual's life, 5-minute-long Bollywood dances and childhood flashbacks totally irrelevant to the story.

I watched most of this at 4x speed and it was still way too slow and boring. No idea why this has been so highly rated.

The use of English even in the local scenes was highly jarring and unfortunate. But I guess c. 2014 when this series was being made, Netflix still felt the need to appeal to unsophisticated Americans unused to subtitles.

The actors may or may not have been selected less for their ability to act and more for their willingness to appear naked (and look good while doing so).

Hanna (2011)

Hanna is a poor imitation of Jason Bourne

[6/10 · 27 May 2018]

Basically, Jason Bourne, played by a 15-year-old or so Saoirse Ronan, but less convincing, logical, or entertaining (the pace was often way too slow).

The fight scenes involving Hanna were especially unconvincing. The container fight scene at around the 1:14 mark was especially unconvincing and took me out of the movie. The three goons have her, then the teen actress that is Saoirse Ronan grabs and "tosses" the goon aside. It was obvious Ronan (try as she might) wasn't exerting much strength (and the actor playing the goon was doing most of the "self-tossing").

(Reading up on the director Joe Wright, one sees that he specializes in drama pieces and has no experience with action movies. This, of course, could have been remedied by a capable crew, assistant directors, stunt team, etc. but evidently these were not available.)

As many have noted here, there was too much left unexplained. Or more likely, there was no good or logical way to explain most of it. This *might* be OK in some sci-fi or magical realist film, but Hanna was (like the Bourne movies) depicted as set in the (mostly-)real world.

One small example: At the aforementioned fight scene, Hanna has just easily defeated two of the three goons. The only one left is the quirky, whistling guy who's middle-aged, balding, slightly porky, and doesn't seem especially fit. He is running towards her at a comically slow pace and panting. Instead of just easily defeating him as she should be able to, she chooses to escape by jumping into the water.

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

Utterly predictable and unconvincing

[4/10 · 12 May 2018]

I had heard absolutely nothing about this movie, but downloaded it (legally of course) and watched it only because it was on the list of Best Picture nominees.

The first one hour or so was utterly boring with nothing going on. An intellectual, multiglot family chills out in the summer at some villa in beautiful Italy. Some grad student Oliver comes to "work".

I could not see at all where this movie was going. Which meant, of course, that there was only one utterly predictable possibility - the 17-year-old son Elio was going to have some sort of love affair with the grad student.

But this possibility made no sense to me. There was no chemistry/romance between the two of them and not the slightest hint that either was attracted to more than just members of the opposite sex.

Then boom, midway in the movie, they suddenly start hooking up. You see it coming only because that's the only way the movie could possibly have gone (to have any hope of redemption), yet it was utterly unconvincing. They then spend the rest of the movie frolicking and having more unconvincing hook-ups.

I will admit that Elio's performance was pretty good and thus worthy of a Oscar nomination (but certainly nowhere near as good as Gary Oldman's Churchill).

But Oliver's performance was especially unconvincing and wooden. It was possible that Oliver was engaging in a manipulative, one-sided fling with a kid, but completely unbelievable that he was madly in love with Elio, as we were made to believe towards the end of the movie with the "epic" father spiel and the phone call.

The Road (I) (2009)

28 Days Later, minus the humour and the horror

[7/10 · 27 June 2015]

So this was based on a book.

I imagine the book must've been very good.

But the movie was a terrible bore.

I suppose it was meant to be moving, poetic, or summat.

But it was none of those.

It was more like just a terrible satirical version (or more like a "reverse" unfunny satire) of 28 Days Later.

28 Days Later had at least as much of the moving/poetic/deep moments as this movie.

But it had a lot more than that (obviously).

So this sucked.

Don't waste your time on it.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Run-of-the-mill superhero movie - a disappointing and unworthy sequel to The Avengers (2012)

[7/10 · 2 June 2015]

In my opinion, The Avengers (2012) was one of the best movies ever. If you disagree with me, you are an idiot.

I watched The Avengers (2012) while on a plane and deeply regretted not watching it in a cinema instead, because it was so focking awesome. After landing, I got a digital copy of it (through entirely legal means of course) and watched it about 10 times within a two- week span. I ALSO proceeded to watch ALL the previous MCU movies, none of which came close to being as awesome as The Avengers, although some (such as the very first Iron Man) were very damn good.

I vowed that I would pay to watch ALL sequels to The Avengers in a proper cinema. I also forecast that the series of Avengers movies would be the best/greatest/awesomest trilogy (or quadrilogy) of all time.

So imagine my disappointment when, three years later (i.e. today), I had to sit through 2+ hours of an utterly pedestrian superhero movie. I felt like crying when, after random things blew up and rocks flew around and they went to "The New Avengers Facility", I realized the movie was coming to an end.

Because you deeply value my opinion, here are my rankings for the 11 MCU movies released so far (as of May/June 2015):

#1 Avengers 1 A++ One of the best movies ever #2 Iron Man A+ #3 Captain America 2 A #4 Guardians of the Galaxy A #5 Iron Man 2 A (unlike most, I actually liked this) #6 Thor 2 A-

#7-#10 B+ (Run-of-the-mill, predictable superhero movies) The Incredible Hulk Thor 1 Captain America 1 Avengers 2

#11 Iron Man 3 B- Total Scheiβe (compared to most of the other MCU movies). I hated this particularly bad.

3 Idiots (2009)

Too long; gets much better towards the end; ripe for a Hollywood remake

[8/10 · 1 February 2015]

A wonderful and uplifting if at times cheesy movie. This is quite possibly the first Bollywood film I've ever watched ---I am glad to have done so.

Suggestions:

This would have been a much better film had it been say 1 hr 50m instead of 2hr 50m in length. Cut back on some of the school and antics stuff. (But perhaps a lengthier film is standard in Bollywood? I do not know.)

The 10 years later stuff especially was good and should have taken up half the film rather than just one third.

All the suicides and suicide attempts were a bit too melodramatic and unbelievable. It'd be fine if it were really a reasonably accurate portrayal of school life in India---suppose say the average person attending one of these top schools is likely to be acquainted with at least one person who has attempted suicide primarily because of such matters. But I doubt there is anywhere in the world---even in India, China, Japan, Korea---where things get that extreme.

The Right Stuff (1983)

The Right Stuff for 1983

[7/10 · 18 November 2014]

Way too long at over 3 hours. (But not unusual in 1983.)

Sexist - wives are just stammering fools, sitting and fretting at home while their husbands go do heroic stuff. (But not unusual in 1983.)

'Real heroes' with "The Right Stuff" sit in a plane or spaceship, flip some switches, and watch the nice scenery go by. Get glory and accolades if they live. And get immortalized if they die. 'Real heroes' also get their own Hollywood movie. (Not an unusual notion even today and certainly not in 1983.)

Too much American patriotism bullshit. (But again, not unusual in 1983.)

Altogether a worthy performance for 1983, but mostly puke-worthy today.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

No worse than any of the first three!

[7/10 · 18 October 2013]

I just watched all four in the series (over the course of a month). I thought the first was pretty mediocre, but could see why it would have been awesome in 1981.

The next three were the exact same thing, over and over again.

The only reason why "Indy 4" got such bad reviews is because it's no longer 1981. What was once fresh and awesome is now stale and cheesy.

Format: Movie begins with Indiana Jones embroiled in some tricky situation, at some random exotic location. He gets out of it unscathed, of course. Bullets fly everywhere but none will ever touch him.

We then move on to the main story. Indiana Jones for some reason needs to recover some artefact which we know will turn out to be somehow magical. Lots of villains (Nazis, Indians, Nazis, Soviets) also want the artefact. They keep trying to kill Indiana Jones. They keep capturing him, but every time they capture him, they have some reason (or not) to keep him alive. They keep him guarded by one or zero guys so he can escape. He escapes. While dodging as usual several thousand bullets.

The villains are all incompetent klutzes who consistently get whooped, even if it's 5-on-1 and they are all armed and Indy just has his bare fists. They often like to stand around and laugh evilly for no apparent reason. (In this regard, Indy 4 was slightly better, as Cate Blanchett was a little less incompetent than the usual Indiana Jones villain. Though most of her Soviet soldiers were still comically retarded.)

There is some good looking chick for Indy to screw in each movie. Except for Indy 4 of course, because it's gross to even hint that a 65 year old is capable of intercourse.

We get to the end where the artefact is recovered. The bad guys always happen to be there as well, often prodding Indiana to get it for them.

But of course the bad guys don't fully appreciate the power of the artefact, and so they all get annihilated by the magic of the artefact, while Indiana and friends get out nice and safe. You know, just in case there is another sequel and a few hundred more million to be made.

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

I'd like this movie more if it was more believable

[8/10 · 23 September 2013]

Haven't read it, but probably the book was better. So much moral complexity and layer upon layer of conspiracies cannot be done in 110 minutes, especially when it's an often deliberate, dramatic 110 minutes.

55 minutes into the movie (halfway mark), kidnapped girl is supposedly drowned. Body is never found. We know that obviously there is something more to this; and we're willing to bet that she is still alive, since this movie is obviously nowhere near done. We just don't know where this could possibly be headed.

Another 20-25 minutes pass and we discover that girl's uncle and Ed Harris have something to do with it. Seems they did it for the money. Hrm OK sure, a bit of a stretch, especially since the movie is ending soon.

Then bam! 10 minutes later, we're slammed with the jaw dropping revelation that ex police chief Morgan Freeman had something to do with it. About 5 more minutes before everything is clarified to us. Apparently uncle, Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman were good guys trying to do the good thing and had set up this *massive* conspiracy to rescue this particular little girl from her mother.

Then just another 10-15 minutes to mull it over and the movie ends.

Altogether this movie was very well done, but the *massive* conspiracy at the end was just too much of a stretch. If it's not a superhero or fantasy movie, you need to have at least a little bit of plausibility.

Couple of cops in Boston manufacturing a gigantic, insanely complicated conspiracy to save a girl from her crack-addicted mother? When

(i) there is great uncertainty about how the girl will turn out (probably the majority of kids whose parents are crack addicts turn out fine);

(ii) there are, besides kidnapping a girl and manufacturing a conspiracy, a quadrillion other options to making sure the daughter of a crack addict turns out OK--

(a) call Social Services, as boy detective suggested;

(b) offer to adopt the kid from the mom;

(c) offer to take care of the kid at least occasionally if the mom doesn't want to give her up;

(d) keep a vigilant eye on the kid at all times

(e) etc etc etc.

Lincoln (2012)

Felt like a propaganda reel extolling the virtues of American democracy

[7/10 · 14 September 2013]

Altogether this was a decent movie. I can see why Americans who've been taught all about the Civil War and how wonderful and great Lincoln was might thoroughly enjoy this movie.

But for the remaining 7 billion of us on this planet this was a bit of a yawn. While getting a constitutional amendment to pass is exciting fare in the US, those of us who have not already been thoroughly suffused with this aspect of American history are, like, whatever.

Too slow paced. For example, for a 2.5 hour movie it could've shown us a bit more of the Civil War to spice things up (rather than just some burning buildings and corpses strewn about). I guess Spielberg and producers wanted this to be exclusively a hagiography about Lincoln, but I'm sure there are already lots of American high school history textbooks for that. C'mon! Give us some explosions and gun battles and boom-boom-pow!

And finally, for the 7 billion of us who don't think the US is the greatest country on the planet, a lot of the movie felt like a cheesy propaganda reel.

Iron Man Three (2013)

Extremely sad

[4/10 · 6 September 2013]

Iron Man = Very awesome Iron Man 2 = Slightly less awesome but still very damn good. The Avengers = Officially one of my top 10 favorite movies ever.

Iron Man 3 = WTF??? It was like some bad James Bond movie from the 1970's.

Random bad guys doing random bad things. Room service comes to hotel room and out pops the bad guy just behind room service. Girl in bra gets tied up and waits to get rescued. President of da USA gets involved. Bad guys hijack good guys' equipment. Lots of random explosions.

No explanation of how the bad guys can mysteriously take over all the TV channels in the USA. No explanation of how the bad guys have this super magic super powers, that allow them rip Iron Man to bits or melt down Iron Man, even though Iron Man has previously had no trouble taking down an invasion of aliens swarming into Earth through a wormhole. Etc. Etc.

Random lame jokes where Iron Man gets hit by a trailer and breaks into bits. Mark 42 comes flying in to the rescue and trips over something and falls into bits. Haha. Why not have Iron Man slipping over a banana peel?

The anxiety thing was I guess a modern (or "postmodern" touch), but made ZERO sense. It didn't fit in at all and just seemed like a random monkey wrench thrown in to spice things up.

The plot, writing, and dialog were just total crap. This was easily the worst movie of the 7 movies released in the Marvel cinematic universe to date.

After Iron Man 1 and 2 and the Avengers, I was starting to fall in love with Robert Downey Jr. He was still an amazing actor in Iron Man 3, but with such crappy writing and dialog I don't know how he was even willing to be in this movie. (Well probably helps that they paid him a little.)

The Wolverine (2013)

WORST X-men movie ever (by far).

[3/10 · 27 July 2013]

Usually plot holes are isolated. This movie was however one giant plothole.

(1) Grandpa

This is what I understood at the end of the movie: Turns out Grandpa is a bad ass who just wanted to magically suck Wolverine's healing powers and live forever. So what he did was (i) Invite Wolverine to Japan; (ii) Fake his own death; (iii) As part of his plan (?) inject a spider onto Wolverine's heart so that he loses his healing powers--What in the world did this achieve for evil Grandpa?; (iv) As part of his plan (?) allow his granddaughter to be subject to multiple assassination attempts, just so that Wolverine will keep following her; (v) Then after leaving a trail of crumbs for Hansel and Gretel, captures his granddaughter, and lures Wolverine to some sort of lair, where his powers can be sucked.

The (?)'s indicate where I am not sure if it was really part of Grandpa's plan or things just worked out this way.

Given the tremendous amount of uncertainty involved in the above plan (e.g. Wolverine might've been killed, in which case no powers to suck; his granddaughter might've been killed, in which case end of story, and Wolverine would've returned to the Yukon to chill out with grizzlies), you'd think there'd been a simpler and cleaner way to do all this. But no.

All this is quite forgivable, compared to other things that went wrong.

(2) Viperwoman

What the hell is motivating her? What does she want? Is she working for herself? Or is she working for Grandpa and if so, why?

How did she inject the spider onto Wolverine's heart? Just by kissing him in the middle of the night? (This was never clarified.)

(3) Japanese Father and Japanese Fiancé

OK so it turns out the whole family (except pretty granddaughter) are a bunch of one-dimensional assholes. This is clichéd and boring and stupid, but still acceptable if you at least make some effort explaining what exactly was motivating them.

Japanese Father wants to kill his own daughter just because Grandpa willed her everything? (Oh, and this too was part of Grandpa's grand masterplan?)

Japanese Fiancé is just some asshole who's engaged to pretty granddaughter (this, BTW, is explained for us gaijin simply by the line that "You're not Japanese, so you won't understand"). He's the minister of justice or something. And he likes to have white hookers in his hotel room. Uh, and what else do we know about him? Nothing! Basically he's just some asshole who somehow wants to do bad things.

There are many other things wrong with this movie. E.g.,

(4) Totally artificial and forced chemistry between Wolverine and pretty Japanese granddaughter.

I literally cringed whenever they hooked up.

(5) Jean Gray bad dreams BS was just LAME

I can think of only two things I liked about the movie: (A) The Nagasaki A-bomb scene. Pretty sick, think it's the first time I've seen it portrayed up-close in any movie. (B) The black ninjas, doing their thing in the middle of the night and flying across roof-tops.

Other than that this movie was total scheisse.

13 Assassins (2010)

A bore

[3/10 · 28 June 2013]

Plot summary:

First 15 minutes: The half-brother of the Shogun is a stereotypical Japanese psychopath who likes killing and maiming his servants for sport. He'll soon be promoted to some Council where he'll have more power to do bad things. Therefore he needs to be assassinated. Let's call him Bad Boy.

Next 30 minutes: Recruitment of the 13 Assassins.

Next 30-40 minutes: Bad Boy is travelling from some part of Japan to another part of Japan. 13 Assassins plan their attack. They buy over some village that they know Bad Boy will pass by. and set it up Home Alone-style.

Final 1 hour: Bloodbath. And surprise, surprise! Bad Boy gets killed in the end!! End of movie.

Review: Everything is utterly predictable and stereotypical. Bad Boy is just the usual psychopath. The samurai assassins are your usual samurai. The story develops EXACTLY as predicted. Nothing interesting. No character development, no nuances, nothing.

When it finally gets to the bloodbath you are a little relieved because it has been a total bore so far. The initial Home Alone-style surprise attacks and explosives are somewhat amusing.

But when it gets to hand-on-hand (sword) combat it is just STUPID. The sword fighting had all the realism of a bad 1970's Hong Kong movie. All the bad guys (supposedly 130 of them) just dicking around, hovering in the background, while each assassin gets to pick off the bad guys one at a time. Each bad guy waits patiently for his turn in the queue to get sliced up.

Looper (2012)

The last part especially sucked

[7/10 · 24 June 2013]

You thought they were going to help string things together and make sense of everything. Instead you just get a parting shot of the boy and I guess we're supposed to ponder deeply about what actually happens. Ooh. Profound.

Turns out that rude little farm-boy is the American version of Akira (google it - many here have already mentioned the Terminator rip-off, but I didn't notice anyone mentioning Akira.)

Totally random and unrelated. Hey why not just have the Avengers pop out of nowhere to save the day?

Lots have also mentioned the incoherence and problems with time-travel. My only comment will be this: It was a cheap trick to try to get away with it by having Bruce Willis saying "It's complicated."

I am reminded of how my elementary school teacher used to tell us that we should never end stories with "It was all just a dream." It's stupid, anti-climactic, and cheap (well I think she put it in a nicer way, but that was basically the message). Same thing with this movie, especially the last half hour.

Altogether there were some entertaining moments, which is why I'd still give this movie a 7. I don't regret spending about two hours of my life watching it, but it's close.

Amour (2012)

Who gives a flying puck who the director of the movie is?

[1/10 · 6 April 2013]

I try always to be balanced and measured, and reserve such judgments as "1 (awful)" for the truly contemptible. This is one such movie.

This is just your usual art-house TOTAL bore where you see one person feeding another, clothing another, bathing another, and ooh big #@%!ing surprise, he kills her at the end. Ooh how touching and painful. The only pain you'll get from this is having to sit through two hours of this miserable nonsense.

I think now I've figured out how to tell that a movie is going to be an art-house bore: when all the "movie critics" (whether those who are actually paid or the wannabe ones like here on IMDb) wax lyrical about the director (ooh "Haneke's masterpiece" or ooh "Haneke at his finest").

Why---if a movie is any good---would it matter AT ALL who the director is, or what his "confrontational past" was?

It's exactly like when you put any cheap and crappy wine in an expensive bottle, and all the wine critics go ooh and aah, extolling its virtues with the same tired clichés. There is nothing actually good about the wine. But the critics make themselves believe that they like it, just so they can distinguish themselves, and avoid being perceived as having the tastes of hoi polloi, the masses, the rabble, who are unable to appreciate such sophisticated fare.

American Beauty (1999)

My all time greatest movie (or favorite or best, however you want to put it)

[10/10 · 26 March 2013]

I do not understand why American Beauty is not regarded by more as the greatest/favoritest/bestest movie ever.

The first time I ever watched it, after the dénouement, and as the Beatles' "Because" played at the end credits, I just sat there spellbound and transfixed, thinking, "WTF just happened??"

A roommate of mine passed by the living room (where I was watching the movie) and asked, "Oh was it good? Was it deep? Was it intelligent?"

I must have just mumbled something in response. But what I was thinking afterwards was that you can't just characterize this movie as "deep" or "intelligent". This is one of the very rare precious gems that may be correctly described as ineffable.

This ineffability is all the more so, given the totally mundane and unexciting premise of a suburban family, consisting of a 40 something year old father in some sort of a midlife crisis, an unhappy wife/property agent, and an angsty teenage daughter.

The only way to do justice to this movie is to tell you to go watch it, if for some really odd reason you haven't already!

A Separation (2011)

One of the best movies ever.

[10/10 · 23 March 2013]

This movie won the 2011 Oscar for "Best Foreign Film", but really it should have won the Best Picture, as it was easily far better than "The Artist" or any of the other nominees that year.

Instead it wasn't even nominated. WTF?

From a completely prosaic and quotidian premise, we are treated to the unfolding of a wonderfully nuanced and complex morality tale. This is one of the very rare gems, where if I tried to describe to you what the movie was about, I'd just completely fail to impress you in any way, and yet you'd be blown away when you actually watch it. Just bloody hell watch it already if you haven't.

The acting was also OUTSTANDING. From everyone. Even the teenage daughter.

Incendies (2010)

Best. Twist. Ending. Ever.

[5/10 · 22 March 2013]

Woohoo! Turns out their brother is also their father! Best twist ending ever!

Uh, actually, no.

I sat through the first 1.5 hours of this movie, hoping that there'd be some redeeming quality at the end, other than the usual arty farty French (or French Canadian) BS. Wow turns out it's not quite what you expected.

For a more authentic and heartwrenching Canadian performance depicting horror and grue, go see instead "One Lunatic One Icepick" (warning: parental advisory). It's only about 10 minutes long, compared to 2 hours of this Incendies nonsense.

P.S. I sat through the movie thinking how absolutely shitty the twin brother's acting was (the others were OK, but nothing stellar), so my mind was blown when I read Rotten Tomatoes' summary which called the acting "impressive".

Le Havre (2011)

An exemplar of why people assume that arty-farty movies are boring

[3/10 · 3 October 2012]

I made the mistake of watching this (and hence costing me 93 minutes of my life) just because it garnered a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I wish to deter anyone else from wasting time on this movie.

A Family Guy character once said "It's either bad meat or good cheese...". Likewise, Le Havre is either a bad movie or good art.

The acting is pretty bad, especially from the Gabonese boy.

I don't know if this was supposed to be some sort of a throwback tribute to movies from a half-century ago, but the facial close ups and the dramatic and exaggerated actions (e.g. when the Gabonese boy runs from the container) were just a total bore and highly unamusing.

The RT summary says "Aki Kaurismäki's deadpan wit hits a graceful note with Le Havre, a comedy/drama that's sweet, sad, and uplifting in equal measure." I could see the deadpan. But not the wit, nor the sweetness, nor the sadness, nor was I uplifted in anyway. I was just deeply annoyed.

But of course, I didn't major in film history during college, so what would I know?

Edit: I forgot to mention the bit where the wife is in hospital and her friends read her Kafka. I think I was supposed to go: "Oooh ... Kafka ... this must be a deep and profound movie."