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alice-loweecey
Reviews
Na yeh ling san, ngoh choh seung liu Wong Gok hoi mong Dai Bou dik hung Van (2014)
Interesting BUT
(Spoiler)
WARN PEOPLE ABOUT RAPE SCENES DAMMIT! I skipped ahead 5 mins and I don't care if I missed something. The rapist could've had so many other reasons for being a scumbag. Just STOP with rape as a plot device already!
Other than that: Clever. Believable characters. Quite off the wall. Good use of gallows humor.
I almost didn't mind the abrupt ending because I was too busy coming up with possible reasons for everything. I'm one of the people who also didn't mind the ending of Don't Blink, either.
Recommended with the above caveats.
The Green Knight (2021)
Dev Patel was great
We paid for the A24 screening on 8/18 because we weren't comfortable going to a theater. One thing hasn't changed: the sound mixing sucks. My son is a sound engineer and he griped about the simple adjustments needed to make the whispered dialogue *and* the music equally audible. But I digress.
I'm very familiar with this story. Overall, I liked this take on the legend. Some of the symbolism was delivered with a sledgehammer, but hey, we're in allegory territory here. The good old monster movie trope of "Never trust the friendly space aliens" was well played. Sarita Choudhury and Alicia Vikander were fantastic and Dev Patel was the glue holding the movie together. His character was likeable from the first scene and I immediately rooted for him to succeed.
The cinematography was lush, brilliant, creepy, evocative--especially the use of dark/light and colors. 10 stars for it. Costumes were great. The music was good.
Why only 6 stars then? Because it felt like an extended director's cut. It needed a firm editor and at least 20 minutes deleted. My son and I both lost interest at about the 40 minute mark. We'd been looking forward to this for weeks, but we finished it only because we paid for it. The snippets of humor fell flat, every one of them. I found myself reciting lines in my head from MP and the Holy Grail in spots. The minute the fox appeared I wished someone had involved Pixar.
Without spoilers, I will say that I haven't been this relieved at a final scene in years.
So: Watch it for Dev Patel. He's on my short list of "I'll watch a movie if he's in it." Watch it for the cinematography. Watch it to compare where it keeps to the source material and where it adds its own take. But bring coffee and a snack. You'll need the energy boost.
2067 (2020)
Seriously, it's not as bad as other reviews say
Frankly, I watched this on Hulu *because* of all the bad reviews. I needed a laugh and expected this to provide it.
The lead and his sidekick weren't bad. The villain was weak. The fx weren't that bad. The matte paintings weren't that bad. The time travel cylinder wasn't that bad.
It loses all its points in the script. We've seen all this before (Total Recall, Dredd, Planet of the Apes, Wall-E etc) but it's the ride that matters.
There was way too much suspension of disbelief required, and they didn't supply it. If you're going to make time travel the central plot, I have to believe it without arguing at the screen.
The plot twists were telegraphed. The director wasn't able to bring enough out of the actors to make up for the script's failings.
That being said, I enjoyed most of it for what it was.
If you need an antidote, I recommend early Doctor Who and the almost perfect 'I'll Follow You Down'.
The Living and the Dead (2016)
Massive spoiler ahead
Not bad, but too drawn out. 6 eps that should've been 3. Clever ghosts vs. Time travel subplot, but
(spoiler)
*completely ruined* by a tacked-on ending in an attempt to get a second season, and I mean it, completely ruined. I yelled at the screen.
Equinox (2020)
The moral: never trust anyone. Period.
I truly enjoyed every actor in this series. The teens were believable, the kids more or less acted like kids. The parents were a little restrained, but the last episode was one big "Ohh, so that's the reasoning behind (insert a dozen character hints)."
That being said, allow me to resurrect an old internet acronym: OMGWTFBBQ!
Briefly: the mystery is well crafted. The plot points intertwine well. The flashbacks are spaced well. I I rooted for adult Astrid AND 9-year-old Astrid immediately. The 'den' was delightfully creepy! I knew 98% of the upcoming plot twists but they got me with a major one and I take my hat off to the writers. When things really started to move during the last episode
The ending for the sisters was overtly happy, but when you realize what their decision entails, holy crow. Holy crow.
Definitely recommended. Dark, mysterious, moving, CREEPY.