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carloenrico-salvadori
Reviews
Bad Samaritan (2018)
You are beyond correction
This is a total letdown. It has the pace and "character development" of a crappy tv movie, full of clichès like the psycho rich billionaire, who is so unhinged that his catch phrases become involontarily hilarious pretty soon, or the clumsy hero that has become a sort of 21st century trope, exemplified in contrast by the bravado of the "damsel in distress" who hits the villain first and then excoriates the protagonist with a most brilliant line like "This is how you save someone".
Too long, too slow, too predictable.
31 (2016)
Rob shows Hardcore Henry how it's done
I should preface this review by confessing I am a little biased, Rob Zombie being my favourite contemporary American horror director. Having said that, this is probably not his best work, but I still consider it high quality stuff. From the initial monologue of killer guru Doom-Head, to the role reverse of Devil's Rejects, where the 2005 slayers fall preys of Mc Dowell and his acolytes mischievous crew. It seems to me that Rob here wanted to strike back at the unwarranted invasion of video games in the horror genre, exemplified by Hardcore Henry in particular, by creating a product with the pace and the villains of a video game and at the same time the cinematic art and the vintage setting of the seventies which you can find in almost all his other movies. The video game part is therefore dependent upon the rules of cinema and not vice versa as in the aforementioned title. The slayers are absolutely great, the nazi Mexican midget being the cherry on top. IMHO I'd give it seven/ eight stars but I added another one desperately trying to boost the rating.
Baskin (2015)
Bava and Fulci back from the dead
Whoever criticises this movie under the assumption that it is too slow, or that the plot lacks internal consistency, is clearly illiterate when it comes to the horror genre. The cinematography is heavily inspired by classic Italian horror icon Mario Bava, the building setting is reminiscent of Argento, while he was still alive, artistically speaking, and Fulci, and cannot easily be erased from memory, especially given how the director chooses to represent the black mass cultists as a sort of orgiastic congregation of zombies. Besides the whole concept of the movie could be seen as a mixture of John Carpenter's "Assault on Precint 13" and "Prince of Darkness". To sum up, if you haven't seen anyone of the movies quoted above, please do not write negative reviews for the best horror flick of the decade, it only shows your illiteracy.
Incendiary (2008)
"Bridget Jones meets James Ballard" VS sappy melodramatic incoherent mess
I'm going to start this review by making an effort in being generous and understanding, pointing out, that a possible reason for the galactic difference between the novel and the motion picture, is that the former was written one year before the actual terrorist attack on London on July the seventh 2005, while the latter was shot four years after, which could explain the impossibility to maintain certain features of the novel, which I am going to further analise in a second. Having specified that I now feel free to unleash the beast. First a plot summary as brief as possible: A working class woman, with an over the top personality, portrayed as a sort of Bridget Jones epigone, has her husband and her four year old son killed in a suicide bombing attack at the "Emirates Stadium". This is the only snippet the movie and the novel share; Afterwards they take two totally different directions. The book depicts a dismal, dark, gloomy, bleak , post apocalyptic setting, from the point of view of the female protagonist, in the form of a letter addressed to Osama Bin Laden. Chris Cleave, a Guardian columnist, literally paints pictures with his words, showing a society in decay, with particular concern about class conflict and government deceptions. Some claim that the only merit of the movie is to show the place where the book protagonist lives; that is only partially true, due to the colourful and imaginative writing of the novel, which is more than sufficient for the reader to form a picture in his head. The book also features modern,highly twisted and thrilling eroticism, which is the reason for this review's title. The novel follows the rules established by the late and great J. G. Ballard in his 1973 milestone in the history of modern literature, "The Atrocity Exhibition". Ballard, who worked for BBC at that time, and must be considered as one of the founders of British contemporary media, highlighted a sick connection, between catastrophes such as atomic explosions or car accidents and the release of sexual energy. Of course in the novel the perspective is turned upside down, the woman reminiscences images of the bombing while finding herself in sex related situations, but the connection is exactly just the very same. The film does not cover any of these aspects: Politics, Society and twisted eroticism are almost completely neglected, and replaced by a sappy soap operistic piece of trash, which makes Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbour" shine as a Stanley Kubrick motion picture. The doom setting of the novel is replaced by the brightiest, most childish, shallow and dull cinematography I have ever seen. The editing, especially towards the second half, is completely random. The soundtrack was probably written by some British equivalent of those self nominated, self righteous Italian "pop classical artists" such as Ludovico Einaudi or Giovanni Allevi. An unhonourable mention, concerning the acting and then we're done. Matthew Macfayden stars as Terrence Butcher, the head of the anti- terrorism task force. His acting can be compared to a first grade child, reading the list of the grocery store, or to a freshly retired ski alpine world champion turned into acting for the first and last time in his life. Fortunately they probably digitally removed the paper from where he was reading his lines in post production. To sum up, if you have already read the novel, stay far away from the movie, otherwise the book is a must read, therefore I highly recommend it.
V/H/S/2 (2013)
Without the Indonesian short, It would have been one
This movie is, in my opinion , far behind V/H/S, though well directed, for mainly two reasons:
1)When you see a short film and in the end you go: "Oh, what a good subject, too bad there was little time for some details to be cleared, this could be an excellent hint for a feature film", it means the short was really good.
This is what happened all the way in the first V/H/S and what lacks constantly in this one.
2)In the first V/H/S there was constantly a certain allure of mystery during the different short films, because at the beginning of each short you did not know what kind of horror to expect.
Let's compare as an example the honeymoon episode in the first V/H/S with the zombie biker episode in this one.
Arrived nearly at half of the honeymoon sketch, you still can expect anything, before the killing girl enters the hotel room.
On the other hand, as soon as you see the girl throwing up in the biker episode you know it is a zombie kind of deal.
I could say the same about the last episode (Alien abduction, by far the worst one) compared to the "Paranormal activity vs organ predator aliens" episode of the first V/H/S.
Of course the Indonesian short saves the whole movie, because it has some tricky twisting points, and the POV is not so strict as in the other episodes.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the strict use (or I would rather say abuse) of POV, which affects the other three episodes (the last one is the worst one also because the camera is placed on the ugliest dog I have ever seen).
To sum up, if you are a beginner in horror genre and you like splatter teen ager bound stuff, this movie is for you.
Otherwise, you would certainly prefer the first one.
The Numbers Station (2013)
A great breaking-rules action thriller
Do not expect this to be the usual spy-story with a ruthless killer turning against the secret agency for conscience troubles, or because his life is being threatened, and also do not expect a complicated spy- storyline. The spy conspiracy here is only a background theme. The movie focuses mainly on the interaction between the two main characters, according to the dangerous situation they are involved, and as I wrote in the summary, it breaks some typical clichés for this kind of films. The acting is really awesome, especially John Cusack, Malin Akerman and Liam Cunningham. I will not spoiler it any further, but I strongly recommend it if, like me, you are not particularly keen on predictable-ending spy movies with agency employee ruthless killers, turned into lambs ("The expatriate" is the first title that comes to my mind because it is the last I watched) and you like more cynic stuff e.g. Canadian TV series "La femme Nikita".
El cuerpo (2012)
Worth watching but certainly not above average
There are no actual spoilers in this review, but I just want to make sure some lines are not misunderstood. This Spanish thriller certainly has a strong pace and some really good basic ideas, though not particularly original. Alex Ulloa's wife Mayka dies of a heart attack ,someone steals the body from the morgue and detective Pena must find it. There are certainly some tricky cliffhangers but in the end some details do not quite fit. Besides the photography and the dialogs are a little too the CSI kind, at least for 75 percent of the movie. At the end of the movie you are going to regret about this telly mood, thinking what could have been done on a subject like this, by Korean directors such as Park Chan Wook (old boy) or Kim Jee Woon (I saw the devil).
House Hunting (2012)
Enough is enough
This movie is part of a horror sub-genre we could define as "cyclic movies", where at the end one or more of the characters return where they were at the beginning, or, like in this case, where other characters were at the beginning. I can name a lot of them: "House", "Farmhouse", "Reeker" , "Dark Country", and so on. I have to admit this is not my favourite horror genre, but in everyone of the four titles I have previously mentioned I can find something interesting. This one, instead, is really boring, and its length is clearly utterly exorbitant because of the really poor script. Thus, if you are not a die-hard fan of "paranormal house" movies I strongly suggest not to loose time with this one.
Movie 43 (2013)
Where "Idiocracy" failed "Movie 43" succeeds
I think most reviews, both positive or negative, do not quite get what's at stake here. They both focus on the gross and screwball comedy, which, of course, is one of the main features of this movie and do not quite appreciate the "second level", the bitter satire on what western society is becoming. Thus, I am going to examine every single episode one by one: 1)A modern version of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The emperor's new clothes": Nobody seems to notice the monstrosity of Hugh Jackman's character because he's rich and handsome. 2)A satire on the stupidity of the average American parent in educating kids. 3)A potshot thrown at western rituals of courtship. 4)Harold Pinter (theatre of the absurd) in a porn version. It could be the beginning of a new genre. 5)A satire on tech corporations and a respectful parody of Cronenemberg movies such as "Existenz". 6)I despise nerds ,most kind of comics and films related to comics, so it was a terrific experience for me to watch this one. 7)A potshot at the stupidity of the average western male of all ages. 8)The only zany episode, although I really enjoyed the Irish dwarfs and Stiffler. 9)Another satire on courtship, this time focused on on-line dating. 10)A parody on all epic sport movies related to political or racial issues, like "Invictus"e.g.,which mainly have two problems: 10.1)The unbearable amount of empty rhetoric throughout the whole movie. 10.2)The actors are not pro, so the agonistic level is utterly ridiculous. 11)A potshot at branded products of stupid cartoons for children (they could not use "Hello Kitty" for copyright issues but that was the target). To sum up, like I said in the summary this movie succeeds in conveying the message, while "Idiocracy" failed.