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Reviews
My Old Lady (2014)
Truly awful
It's not often that I'm this scathing on a movie, but this is everything that's wrong with independent cinema at the moment. I watched this with a friend over the weekend and it was truly the most boring movie I've ever seen. So full of itself and utterly pointless. It's all false intellectualism and trumped up melodrama. The acting was excellent, it's just a pity they had to deliver such cliché and ridiculous dialogue. I don't know who the writer or director is, but hopefully they think twice before committing tripe like this to film again. Avoid at all costs. It's not even worth watching for free. Don't waste your time.
The Wrong Mans (2013)
Fantastic for 5 episodes out of 6
From the very first frame of this clever Hitchcockian comedy/thriller you will be glued to the screen wondering how the two leads are going to escape the situations they find themselves in. Time after time, inventive, funny and dangerous escape plans are hatched and executed with a cleverness we haven't seen on TV for a long time.
There are so many moments in the series were it delves into the cliché and tired tropes of thrillers, yet takes them and twists them in clever and unexpected ways which makes it so much fun to watch.
Episodes three and five are stand outs and it's one of those series where you just want to watch the next episode immediately. The production values are great and the acting in general is good.
My only complaints are: 1. I'd like to have seen the love interest developed a little smoother and 2. The last episode does fall into those tired and cliché tropes of movies in general. It feels lazy in comparison to all the cleverness that has led up to the ending, but the journey as a whole is still extremely satisfying and ultimately a blast to watch. Totally recommended.
Man of Steel (2013)
What happened?
I've given this movie 6 out of 10, but the more I think about it, the more I want to reduce the score. Off the bat, I love Zach's Directing. He nailed 300 and Watchmen. He's the most technically proficient director working in Hollywood today hands down. I also love when he delves into the characters like he did in Watchmen. That's why for the first 1 hour and 20 minutes I was in love with this version of Superman. I loved the character work he did in grounding the film and making it about an Alien, a god and the implications that means for the world. It reminded me of the incredible comic book called, "Superman: Secret Identity". If you haven't read it, do yourself a favour and pick it up. Kurt Busiek is a fabulous writer. It wasn't even the action I had a problem with. That was fine although a little distant and not overly connected to the characters like it was in the first half of the film. What disappointed me most was the Techno Babble. This isn't Star Trek, this is superman. All the Sci-Fi techno talk was boring and took me totally out of the movie. They needed to simplify the story and make it more about Superman's relationship to Earth and not stopping some pointless machine invented for the movie. It was a cold and distant finale to the film that left me extremely underwhelmed after such a great start. Oh and there was no chemistry between superman and Lois. Superman was falling in love for the first time and we didn't see anything or feel how this was affecting him. He'd kept himself at distance from the people of earth for so long, it was only his parents and now Lois who he really let in. We needed to explore this a bit more and that would have made the action more interesting. I feel the writer is to blame for this, not the director. Perhaps a more grounded script and we'd be talking about Man of Steel as one of the great comic book movies.
Black Mirror (2011)
Pilot was ludicrous - spoilers below
Nothing but an infantile exercise in satire. Dark mirror is for Satire what Facebook is for friendship. Here's the problem with Dark Mirror - The world they are satirising, Youth mass media/social media, doesn't need satirising. It's already satire!
The pilot is beyond ludicrous and plausibility. Everybody in charge is an idiot and the filmmakers treat the viewers as such - conveniently glossing over glaring logic flaws and asking the viewer to suspend basic assumptions like cheating us into believing a cut off man's finger is that of a dainty princess.
It's really lazy writing and the show continually asks us to suspend our disbelief beyond for even the most basic of plot points. It would be okay if they cut a few corners to get the message across but the whole thing is an exercise in cutting every corner just to get across a few insipid dark views on the modern world. Like I said, watching real life is more satirical than this.
I did watch the 2nd episode in the hopes that it would get better, but unfortunately it didn't. It was just as silly. It's obvious that Charlie Brooker thinks young people into Talent Shows and Facebook are morons, but a good satire needs to be more than pointing out the obvious. It needs to be more than getting a giant brush and pairing it with random thoughts about the modern age. A good story and something more insightful than a twitter post by a professional sports player would be a good place to start for a show like this. As it stands now it's nothing more than a shallow observation by somebody who thinks they are being clever and nobody has the heart to tell them otherwise.
UPDATE: Just watched the 3rd episode. It's actually interesting because it deals with human relationships and emotions in a grounded way. It does pull a few sneaky tricks, but overall it's much better than the 1st and 2nd episode. Although the resolution adds nothing and doesn't live up to the build up.
Bullet to the Head (2012)
Barely watchable.
I love a good formulaic action movie as much as the next guy but jeez this was really really tough to watch. What was sly doing in this? I would guess for the chance to work with Walter Hill. Unfortunately it was really poorly directed and contains none of the guts that his films are famous for. There is absolutely no chemistry between Sly and his American Korean costar Sung Kang. In Fact Kang was so poor that it was hard not wanting his character to die as fast as possible and just let sly chew the scenery. The dialogue was full of groan moments and the only actor to have some fun in this was Cristian Slater. Unfortunately we don't get to see enough of his character. Every time I wanted to see a little bit more of a certain scene it would be cut or are we just go to the next scene. We never get to explore The atmosphere of the film. It had this fantastic backdrop of New Orleans and basically didn't use it. Overall I would not recommend watching this movie even if you like action movies. That is unless you're a die-hard Sly Completist or just want to know how not to make an action movie.