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Reviews
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Starts well. Looks impressive. Doesn't stick the landing.
There's no doubt this is a visually impressive films, and it is competently put together, but overall it lacks meaningful storytelling depth. The first act was the most interesting, but then it suddenly loses its tense atmosphere through the middle, and lurches into a hasty final act that just doesn't stick the landing.
I say all this as someone who is a big fan of del Toro's work, and would watch a film purely because he made it.
Apostle (2018)
Visually stunning garbage
The new Netflix film Apostle is 2 hours of my life I'll never get back again. Unlikeable characters, gratuitous violence, clunky and pretentious dialogue, plot incoherence, and if the pacing was any slower it'd be going backwards. A film so bad only professional critics will like it.
The Bad Batch (2016)
Just like a bad batch of scones, this one isn't worth the eating.
Pretentious rubbish.
Pacing is terrible, story is almost non existent, and the dialogue (when it does happen) is average at best.
This feels like a series of stylistically beautiful visuals (which is why I gave it a 3 and not a 0) strung together, almost like a big budget film school project, but without any storytelling substance to tie it all together and make it something good.
I really get the sense that she's watched a lot of Tarantino films, and then tried to make one of her own without actually understanding what it is that makes a Tarantino film so good.
Tarde para la ira (2016)
Highly overrated art-house revenge porn
I enjoy good cinema, and I watched this film based on the many reviews claiming that it was an amazing directorial debut that offered excellence in filmmaking.
Having sat through the entire movie, I can't but wonder if the title was actually a satirical attempt at foreshadowing - and that the patient man full of fury is actually meant to be us, the moviegoers who sat through this entire film only to walk away disappointed.
This is a very clever piece of cinematic smoke and mirrors - a film that makes you feel like you've watched something clever and well crafted, but then when you stop and think about it for more than 2 minutes you realise that it actually wasn't that good.
The opening sequence was the best part of the entire film (thus the 3 stars) - it really is something to behold - and all the technical aspects of the film are good (acting, cinematography, etc.) but from the amazing opening sequence, the movie just descends into tropes, incomplete character development, a plot 'twist' that was stripped of all the impact it could have had and thus wasn't actually a twist because they revealed it much too early in the film (and then tried to have another bite at the cherry in the final act,) and a movie whose central themes remained woefully under explored.
The end result was a movie that left me angry, because there just seemed to be no real point at all of what unfolded on screen.
This could have been something amazing, but the character and story development is sacrificed for technically proficient shot selection and execution.
It just felt like there was no point to this movie as the major themes that were begging to be explored (the futility of revenge, violence begetting violence, the woman trapped in a destructive relationship, the broken criminal desperately seeking redemption) remain largely untouched or incomplete.
The Keepers (2017)
A fascinating but ultimately very flawed documentary
The Keepers is a fascinating, engaging, and extremely well made documentary series, that is also extremely flawed.
Apart from a little bit of unnecessary padding in places, a little bit of narrative confusion (at times it is a documentary about the murder of Sister Cathy, at other times it is about clerical sexual abuse), and some moments of corny reality TV style set ups, the flaws in this show doesn't lie in it's technical aspects, but rather in the wild conjecture and the lack of accuracy and balance.
For example, the documentary claims that recovered memories are now a accepted and regular feature of modern psychology - however the exact opposite is true, they are still highly controversial and the majority consensus in psychology is that they are extremely problematic.
Why this point is so important is that the entire premise of this series - that Sister Cathy was murdered by (or under the orders of) Father Maskell - hinges entirely on a recovered memory from just one adult female victim of sexual abuse. The way this memory is presented in the series also raises serious questions (or, at least, it should have, but wasn't, in this series) about its validity - the woman concerned says that she only experienced this memory for the first time AFTER a friend planted the seed in her mind about the crime while looking over an old school year book.
If this recovered memory lacks validity, then so does much of this series (which is probably why they were not accurate in the information they presented about recovered memories.)
There is also a lot of conjecture that is extremely speculative and extremely tenuous.
For example - even if their were maggots found on the corpse of Sister Cathy (a major point of contention in the series) that doesn't prove that the recovered memory was true, and it also raises a serious question about why a murderer would show someone a body - thus linking him directly to the crime - when the whole point of the murder was that it was a desperate attempt to try to hide his involvement in criminal activity.
Then there's the conjecture about the necklace - which, for all we know, was purchased, or stolen by Ed, and has nothing to do with Sister Cathy at all - but the series goes to extreme lengths to speculate a connection into existence (and the subsequent interview with an ageing Ed, in a clear state of mental ill health, seems exploitative.)
The other thing that I found really frustrating about the series was that, apart from some basic details in the very first episode, we are not told a lot about the important specifics of the crime, the evidence, the finding of the body, etc - but these are all really important aspects of this case that will have an important bearing on the theory being proposed by this series.
The series also failed to properly explore some rather glaring inconsistencies and questions in its own evidence.
For example - Koob makes a claim about his relationship with Sister Cathy (that she rejected his infatuation for her) that seems completely contradictory to later evidence about her writing a very intimate love letter to him. Then there's also the largely unexplored questions about his role in the crime - which detectives clearly considered to be major at the time.
Then there's the fact that two different uncles (from two different families) are supposed to have committed the crime - but it is clearly indicated that they never knew each other, and nor are they adequately connected to Father Maskell to make the primary claims of the series compelling.
Like I said, this is a fascinating series, and you have to admire the tenacity of the amateur investigators who continue to pursue the cause of trying to get justice for Sister Cathy, however at the end of the day, this feels like a highly speculative fishing expedition, where all sorts of allegations and theories, regardless of their validity, are being thrust out into the public arena in a very spectacular fashion.
The problem is that this ends up being a trial by media, and we all know how dangerous such an approach can be - both for innocent any parties who end up being wrongly tarnished, and also because they can place a successful criminal prosecution of any guilty party at risk.
My hope is that, despite all the flaws, this show leads to a successful closing of this case.
The Stakelander (2016)
The Stakelander? More like 'The Mistakelander' - don't waste your time
I loved Stakeland, I hated The Stakelander.
This film is not totally awful, but it's pretty darn close, and it doesn't hold a candle to the first film.
Stakeland was a movie that was lovingly crafted and made well on a limited budget - this is B grade schlock that was clearly rushed and nowhere near the same love and attention was put into it.
The acting is not as good, they've stolen concepts straight out of multiple other movies (The Book of Eli, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Road, just to name a few,) and the story is a rushed and incoherent mess.
The villain makes little sense, the interesting concepts of the film are woefully underdeveloped and presented in a totally contradictory fashion - we are told that the world has entered a new 'dark ages', but then everyone is still using modern technology likes cars, electricity, modern medicine, military weapons and armaments, etc. And we are introduced to 'the Brotherhood' who are supposed to be a Christian sect who are in league with a vampire and her vampire hoard despite the blatantly obvious fact that she (and her vampire brood) would clearly be considered as demonic minions from the pit of Hell by any such religious group - but hey, there's no need to tell you why this should be or even explain how this partnership came to be because... reasons.
But on the bright side, they managed to ham-fistedly shoehorn in a gay couple (did they get some sort of extra funding for the diversity points?) and then they keep labouring the fact that they're a gay couple - just in case you missed it the first time around.
When I think about it, this film kind of feels like a cheaply made attempt to make conservatives and Christians look evil and bad while the progressives are the good guys fighting on the side of the angels.
In a nutshell: this movie feels like a montage of set pieces and concepts that have been poorly put together, all the while someone forgot to actually write a plot to string all the various pieces (and concepts blatantly stolen from other movies) together as one coherent whole.
Zero character development, wholesale abandonment of the lore established by the first movie, zero character arcs, blatant copying of other apocalyptic movies (including it's predecessor), poor acting, poorly executed and contradictory story points, action set pieces were poor imitations of the original, nowhere near the same level of attention paid to costume and world development (don't get me started on that awful and cheap looking fortified compound!), nowhere near as many vampires, the musical score was nowhere near as good as Stakeland (and was it just me, or did it feel like the first 10 minutes of the movie was scored by someone totally different than the rest of the film?)
If this movie was a vampire, you wouldn't need to stake it through the heart because it was already dead on arrival.
It's a real shame, because the first movie was an absolute unexpected cult classic worthy of all the praise it gets - in fact, if you haven't seen it already, forget this one and go and watch Stakeland instead!
Rebirth (2016)
Had potential, but ultimately the execution is flawed
This is one of those movies that you get to the end of, and you just know that a lot of people are going to be too scared to admit what they really thought of it, and so instead they're going to start suggesting it's a clever art piece.
It could have been so much better, but the execution is ultimately flawed.
Firstly, the entire plot is reliant on a Machiavellian plan that is so complex that even the Emperor Palpatine would consider it above his pay grade of nefarious scheming.
If it's a piece of pointed satire (presumably the target is Amway) it seems like a rather confused and dishonest way of satirising the cult-like behaviour of a certain direct marketing company - they've mixed honest satirisation in with dishonest and far fetched absurdity.
If it's meant to be a more general artistic commentary about modern life and the modern search for meaning, then it's even weaker - the development of those themes is barely even present, let alone brought to completion, and the entire premise relies on a bizarre act of blackmail to be achieved (hardly the stuff of an honest and sincere examination of the modern search for meaning.)
There is definitely the genesis of a good idea here, but the final product is totally lacking in depth and clarity of vision, and as a result you walk away feeling like you've just been subjected to a technically well made film school project that's more about showcasing set pieces rather than telling a compelling story or presenting a particularly believable and engaging narrative.
The acting is great, but other than that, it's not a particularly good or memorable film - certainly not something I'd re-watch or recommend to anyone.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
One word: overrated
I finally got round to watching this after years of hearing all the hype and telling myself that one day I would have to see what all the fuss was about.
I have often heard people talk about this film being an amazing (albeit disturbing) portrayal of addiction - but I couldn't disagree more.
Part of the problem here is the extremes that these characters experience - extremes that are so detached from reality that they end up alienating the audience from the true reality of what addiction actually means for people who live it. It's almost like watching a cartoonish and deliberately over-hyped exaggeration of clichés about addiction.
The problem is that they are so far removed from the reality of your average person, and from the truth about how serious addictions effect most people that it comes across as totally disconnected from the real world.
Another thing that really struck me was the decision to weave in the storyline about the mother's addiction to diet pills and TV, which is compared with a major drug addiction - but in doing so this trivializes the seriousness of drug addiction, while also doing no favors for people who struggle with food-related addictions and other compulsions.
It's almost as if, during the writing process, the primary question that drove the script was: 'what's the most shocking thing that we could imagine happening to these characters - let's do that, and then just use addiction as the Ex Machina plot device to justify including those shocking scenes.
By the end credits, it literally felt to me like the sort of concepts that a teenager would come up with if they were asked to make a film about addiction - it just felt a bit like a series of clichéd stereotypes that were there to hit you over the head, rather than a serious attempt to delve into the reality of addiction and tell a story about those whose lives are afflicted by it.
The true reality is that the very reason addiction can be so much more damaging to people is precisely because it can go unnoticed, or even incorporated into their daily lives for so many years, with such a level of mundane functionality that over time it robs a person of true flourishing and all the various potential they started out with in life. A lifetime of accumulated bad decisions and outcomes caused by addiction is far more serious and damaging to a person than one off shocking events tend to be.
Last Knights (2015)
Ignore the critics, this was easily one of the best films of 2015
Having just watched this film I am completely at a loss to understand some of the harshly critical reviews I've read on here.
This is more than just a passable film, it's probably the best historical action movie since Gladiator (possibly even slightly better.)
Some of the critics here seem to be unaware that it is a remake of the Samurai classic '47 Ronin' - which is why it plays out the way that it does.
Why did I rate this film so highly?
It has everything that is needed for a great film: good acting, awesome cinematography, and some of the most glorious film sets since the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Most importantly of all though, it is an exercise in storytelling excellence - everything on screen is there to serve the plot, which is an engaging one.
The characters are well written and well acted, and we care about them - which makes all of the action scenes meaningful to us, the audience, because, unlike most modern films of this sort, we actually have some skin in the game (so to speak.)
And the stakes are real - there is some awesome fight choreography that requires the usual willing suspension of disbelief, but none of the characters are absurdly invincible or able to do things so far beyond the laws of physics that any and all dramatic tension is removed from the story.
There are even moments when you find yourself wondering how the plot will play out - which is a sign that, as an audience member, I am invested in the story and not just a disinterested bystander watching a series of clichéd paint-by-numbers scenes unfold.
This is a film about virtue, it's not an exploration of complex moral issues or an episode of Game of Thrones - so if you're looking for some sort of cynical post-enlightenment historical criticism, or some pessimistically dark and pornographic medieval fantasy then you're going to be disappointed.
But if you want great storytelling that is engaging and emotionally rewarding, then this is definitely a film to watch.
Do yourself a favour, check it out for yourself - you might be surprised to discover just how wrong the critics of this movie are (and no, in case you're wondering, I had absolutely nothing to do with the making of this film, and I don't know a single person who did.)
Inherent Vice (2014)
I lasted 39 minutes
I have enjoyed Paul Thomas Anderson's previous cinematic outings, but this one was a beautifully filmed incoherent mess that simply fails to engage the audience.
Don't be fooled by the other reviews: this is NOT a companion film to The Big Lebowski, which, unlike this one, is actually a film that has a coherent and engaging narrative.
It seems to me that the positive reviews of this movie are built on two problematic justifications:
1. The drug taking element of the plot should be considered a justification for the confusing, uninteresting and incoherent way the film is put together.
The problem is that this is not how filmmaking is meant to work - and movies like The Big Lebowski are testament to the fact that visual storytelling and narrative are not meant to go out the window just because drug taking is a major element of the plot.
2. The suggestion that you need to read the novel the film is based on in order to understand the movie.
Once again, that's not how filmmaking is meant to work.
The film is meant to be an adaption of the book that is accessible, in a standalone fashion, to people who encounter the story solely through the medium of cinema.
If your audience needs to do supplemental reading - in this case, the entire book the film is an adaptation of - then the filmmaker has failed at filmmaking 101, which is supposed to be about creating a cinematic version of the source material, not some sort of filmed addition to the original work that is incoherent as a standalone artwork.
Just in case you're wondering, the reason I gave it 4 stars was because the cinematography here is up to Paul Thomas Anderson's usual high standards even if the storytelling isn't.
The Wildest Dream (2010)
An excellent documentary with one small flaw
I really enjoyed this film, finding it particularly engaging and informative, especially after having just watched the poorly crafted mountaineering documentary 'The Summit.'
It was clearly a passion project, and it also revolved around attempting to recreate the fated Mallory expedition, so, unlike others, I wasn't too bothered by the fact that Conrad Anker featured a lot in this documentary.
It felt a little bit forced in places (he clearly seemed to be reading from a script or reciting practiced lines, rather than speaking from the heart, at times) but there were still enough fascinating insights to overlook this sort of stuff (remember, he's an experienced climber, not a documentary filmmaker!)
The one aspect of the documentary that I did find frustrating, and thus the lower rating, was the fact that it was clearly built on endorsing one particular theory about the Mallory expedition, rather than taking a more unbiased approach and allowing their conclusions to simply be part of the wider speculative mix.
This bias meant that we did not get to hear all of the various theories about what possible route they could have taken or whether they even made the climb, let alone the summit, etc.
It also created a situation in which some rather glaring holes in their re-creation attempt of Mallory's possible final climb were completely ignored.
For example; even though he was inexperienced at altitude, Conrad Anker's partner for the re-creation attempt was a very capable rock climber, whereas Mallory's partner was a rower with no climbing experience.
Or the fact that they made their re-creation climb dressed in modern climbing gear, whereas the clothes and boots used by Mallory were very rudimentary and would not have afforded the same advantages to him.
In fact, aspects of their modern re-creation expedition were a little bit gimmicky in places and really added nothing of substance to the documentary - like the very brief use of old style climbing clothes and boots similar to the ones worn by Mallory and his team.
If they'd carried out their whole re-creation expedition wearing the old style gear (something I would never expect them to do in a million years) then that would have added something truly important to the documentary.
Simply putting it on for a brief period was merely a gimmick and it really only resulted in one interesting piece of information - that the old style clothing provided far less protection from the elements, and the boots were far less suitable for climbing than modern gear is. This really should have featured in the final narrative as evidence that challenges the theory that the documentary was proposing, but, alas, it is simply mentioned and then quickly moved on from.
There are also other issues around the timing of the original attempt, and whether they had appropriate oxygen supplies, etc, to complete the climb.
All in all this is a very watchable and interesting documentary that is let down by one simple flaw: it doesn't document all of the evidence, and it really only presents their preferred theory about Mallory's summit attempt (and even then, it's only a very brief examination of that attempt, and a lot of unwarranted conclusions are drawn from it.)
That being said, I'd still highly recommend this movie to others.
The Summit (2012)
Important documentary with a very confused narrative
The story this documentary sets out to tell is a very important one, but the documentary has been created with a very confusing narrative.
The biggest problem is really the decision to include the story of Walter Bonatti, from a totally separate incident that happened on K2 almost 70 years before the tragic events of 2008 that are the central focus of this documentary.
Effectively they've sandwiched together what should be two separate documentaries, and the way that Walter Bonatti retells his story (reading from a script) is really jarring and inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the documentary footage, and as a result it really pulls the viewer out of the movie and the story which should actually be the central focus of our attention (the 2008 incident.)
On top of this, they also chose to use his story as a juxtaposition to the 2008 events - putting the two side by side and cutting back and forth. In the end this simply results in a very confused film narrative with two completely separate incidents that only really share two details in common: the mountain they took place on, and the way in which the events were distorted after the fact.
I don't think the connections were strong enough though to actually justify putting both events side by side in this film, and there is no obvious reason for doing this - instead it just detracts from what is a very powerful story when told without any distractions.
I think that it would have been far better to use that screen time to actually focus on telling the story of 2008 in more detail - there are key moments which aren't really fleshed out properly and as a result you find yourself asking: 'what the heck actually happened there?'
Another thing that felt a little bit disjointed was the beginning of the documentary - it was quite hard to grasp what the actual set up was (i.e. what was going on and who the key players were), and once you get to the end of the film you realise that a lot of that initial first part of the documentary didn't actually add to your understanding of these events.
I also think that after setting up some very obvious questions around ethics, the management of the fateful climb, and prudent decision-making on the mountain, the filmmakers never really explored and went back to these issues in a way that ties the film together with a solid narrative.
I would still recommend this documentary, as I think the story it tells is an important and engaging one, but, sadly, the final film never really reaches its full potential because of the way it was put together.
You also need to go into this movie with an awareness that, in order to properly understand these events, you will actually need to do some supplemental reading about the incident - which really does defeat the whole point of having a documentary movie about an incident.
The Godfather Part III (1990)
This is not a Godfather movie, nor is it good
Okay, so I've just finished yet another Godfather trilogy marathon.
Part I and Part II are cinematic masterpieces that rightly deserve high praise heaped upon them from now until forever - but Part III simply doesn't hold a candle to either of its predecessors.
I suspect that the only reason this movie got the green light was because studio execs. thought that the renewed public interest in the American Mafia in the late 1980's would translate into box office gold for a Godfather sequel.
The problem is that this movie is not the same type of film as its predecessors - which are powerful character-driven tragedies that happen to centre around a crime family, whereas this is a gangster/political conspiracy movie that happens to feature Michael Corleone.
The fact that the plot of this movie features a (now discredited) conspiracy theory about papal assassination lifted straight from the pages of another book should tell you everything you need to know about its originality.
Sofia Coppola's acting was simply not up to the standard of the previous films, or of the other cast members in this film, and as a result there is a major audience disconnect with her character - which all but destroys the impact of her 'romance' with Vincent, and her eventual death, both of which are supposed to be central to the emotional heart and climax of this movie.
While the previous two films featured intricate storytelling involving an ensemble cast, this one felt like a patchwork that was thrown together and ran far too long - the final assassination scenes are so convoluted that it's no longer even clear who is killing who... and to make matters worse, as an audience member, and Godfather fan, I no longer even cared anyway.
The emotional depth of the first two films is missing from this one, and instead it is replaced with contrived sentimentality and clichéd dialogue that often doesn't even make any sense in light of the previous character development (like when Kay tells Michael that she has always loved him, and always will - yet her actions in Part II, and even the start of this film are completely at odds with such a suggestion).
At the end of the day, this feels like little more than hollow cinematic reminiscing (consider the way that Sicily is forcefully thrown into the plot of this movie, compared to the natural and obvious way that it features in the first two films - it's almost like this film is being made to a formula, where the filmmakers are adding concepts and plot developments based on what they think the audience liked in the first two films).
Godfather III simply did not need to be made, as all it does is rehash the plot of the first two films, except in a far less convincing and skillful way - the movie even ends the same as Part II does: with Michael all alone, having attained all he fought so hard to achieve, but also forced to accept all of the unforeseen and tragic consequences that go along with the life he has embraced.
Outcast (2014)
Don't listen to the haters!
I really don't understand all the harshly critical reviews of this movie on IMDb.
This film is not a Ridley Scott swords and sandals epic, but it's still a very watchable and entertaining action film.
It's well shot, relatively well written, the fight scenes are very well choreographed and it clearly has solid production values.
It wasn't perfect, and the story concept is hardly original, but then not too many films are theses days, particularly in this genre.
Despite the complaints from some here, I actually found Nicholas Cage fairly watchable in this movie - there was definitely a noticeable lack of the extreme facial gesticulation and voice variations that he is renowned for. He plays this role a lot straighter than many of his other films.
Cage and Christensen actually have a pretty solid on-screen chemistry in this movie, and they compliment each other fairly well. Sure, their accents sometimes wander, but I didn't find them particularly annoying or distracting.
I would rather watch this than the latest Transformers movie any day!
After the Dark (2013)
As a teacher of philosophy I can assure you that this movie is definitely not philosophy
Let me start by saying that I loved the concept of this movie, and the way in which they tried to bring this classic thought experiment to life. However, from both a philosophical and filmmaking perspective, the execution of this story was hugely problematic.
I am writing this review as someone who has been a passionate reader, student and teacher of philosophy for many years - and as someone who still regularly uses this very thought experiment as an educational tool.
1. At one pivotal point in the movie we are told that philosophy is not morality.
Not only is much of philosophy dedicated to questions of morality, but this entire film is built on a thought experiment that was created to endorse a particular moral philosophy - that of utilitarianism (consequentialism in particular). Such a basic and fundamental error of fact is absolutely unforgivable in a movie that is supposed to be all about philosophy.
2. The final iteration of the thought experiment is meant to show us that utilitarianism is a flawed moral philosophy, and that there are other ways of responding to the scenario it has set up.
However, our main protagonist is still using the moral philosophy of utilitarianism when she executes her new, and supposedly non utilitarian solution to the crisis - the only difference between what she does in the final round, and what the group did in the previous two rounds, is that she makes judgments about the worth of people and chooses them based on traits she deems to be of value rather than the trials that the class formerly deemed to be of value.
The key point though, is that she has still judged people's value based merely on the attributes they posses.
3. The group suicide at the end of the third solution to the thought experiment is not only more like homicide (in that she is the one who decides that everyone else will die), but it is also, once again, utilitarian in nature.
She has deemed that their life no longer has value based solely on the fact that they do not posses the necessary functions for rebuilding their brave new world (which is, ironically, exactly what the teacher was trying to get them to do the first two times, and exactly what she was supposedly avoiding with her third and final solution to the problem).
From a filmmaking perspective; the suicide bomb was also a very weird and contrived way to achieve that plot point - it was an event that completely violated the very rules which the film had created for itself up until that point.
It's one thing to completely change the parameters of the thought experiment as you go (to suit the plot development), it's another thing altogether to start conjuring up fantasy outcomes - an action which was not previously allowed/possible.
If she can conjure up a bomb for convenience, then why wouldn't she conjure up a life- saving text book, or a washed up (and functional) escape vessel instead?!
4. The 'thought experiment inside the thought experiment' that we had presented to us in the third and final round was:
a) completely out of tone with the entire rest of the film (it suddenly goes from dramatic thriller to an American Pie style slapstick comedy).
AND:
b) not actually a thought experiment at all - instead it was merely a sexual fantasy (thought experiments involve scenarios that are meant to be philosophically pondered and possibly solved - but what we saw was neither).
5. The remembering of the code in the third and final round of the thought experiment, by spying on the teacher at the end of the second round, was a complete violation of the laws of the universe the film had created (as well as a violation of how thought experiments work).
Even if you change or add to the parameters of a thought experiment in subsequent variations of it, what you are effectively doing with this action is creating a brand new thought experiment to be pondered and debated.
It's effectively a reset, where everything goes back to the beginning, except this time some of the fundamental parameters have changed so that different logical arguments are brought into play.
But having a character do something like steal a code from a previous discussion of the thought experiment, and then use it in a brand new discussion of a band new version, is nonsense at both a philosophy and filmmaking level - if she has the code, why is she also suddenly alive again when, at the end of the previous thought experiment she was killed in the process of acquiring the code.
6. The ending of the movie is terrible, and it really deflates what has been a solid effort at filmmaking up until that point.
a. We, the audience, despite not having been given any reason to do so, are suddenly expected to care about a creepy (and almost certainly illegal) affair that the teacher is having with a much younger student.
b. The nature of the character of the lead female suddenly undergoes a totally inexplicable 180 degree change, for no good reason, just so that a contrived ending can be executed
c. She ends by stating: "you are a very good teacher Eric", despite the fact that he is sleeping with students, has just been caught trying to publicly humiliate a male student he is jealous of, and has just finished threatening to strip her of the A+ grade she has earned simply because she refuses to join him in humiliating the male student he is jealous of. (And that's not even discussing the fact that he gave a female student he was sleeping with an A+ grade in the first place!)
The Hornet's Nest (2014)
Would have been better if the director had limited his exposure
This is actually two documentaries (i.e. two distinct subject matters) - the first being the story of the father and son journalists (and documentary makers) Mike and Carlos Boettcher, the second being the story of the fighting men on the ground in Afghanistan.
This could have been a truly great documentary if 3 things were done differently:
1. The first half of the movie, about Mike and Carlos Boettcher, was removed from the film, and that time was instead used to introduce us in more detail to the fighting men who would become the subjects of the second half of the documentary (which was definitely where the heart and soul of this film is found).
2. Mike Boettcher had not tried to use the film as a vehicle to justify, and in the process, completely over-hype the importance and role of journalists in war. Journalists play a vital role, but in this film the importance of that role was overblown.
As a father I also really struggled to accept all the 'this is how I redeem my lack of fatherly attention to my family over the years' rhetoric - not only did it lack authenticity, but taking your son to work with you for a couple of weeks is not really how one genuinely makes up for a self-professed and deliberate absence in the life of your wife and child.
3. Mike Boettcher had not inserted himself into this movie so much.
The real story of this documentary is found in the second half of the movie, but Mike Boettcher keeps inserting himself into the powerful narrative the footage is telling in really inappropriate ways - like the continual talking head shots of himself explaining how the fighting was effecting him, and often in a tone that felt really forced and possibly even contrived.
All we really needed from Mike Boettcher was for him to shoot the footage, weave it together into a coherent narrative, and then narrate the story of the fighting men - rather than to keep telling us about himself over and over again.
It's a real shame, because he definitely shot some really amazing footage here, and there is a powerful and very moving story to be told about the courage of these fighting men, and the truly ugly awfulness of futile wars.
If you can hang around for the second half, and you can get past the weaknesses, there is a really powerful story found in the second half of this movie - which would have been made great if Mike Boettcher had removed his own story from this documentary and instead devoted that time to telling more of the story of the fighting men we journey with in the second half of this movie.
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
A million ways to ruin a film
The problem with this film is that it didn't actually appear to understand what it wanted to be.
In places it is romantic comedy, in others it is action drama, in others it is part Adam Sandler comedy, but mostly it's just a collection of crude and unfunny frat boy jokes.
I am amazed the movie failed the way it did, because it has a lot of star power, and a decent budget behind it - but then I guess it just goes to show that just because you can succeed in one medium, that doesn't always mean you are automatically capable of doing the same in every medium.
Probably one of the biggest flaws in this film is that not only does the main character's frame of reference make absolutely no sense, but it's also inconsistent throughout the film.
MacFarlane plays a character who spends the entire movie showing how enlightened he is by complaining about how terrible life in the West is - but he could only know this if he had experienced life AFTER that period, and therefore had something to compare it with. For someone living in that actual period, things would have actually seemed quite advanced, compared to what had gone before, and with all the technological developments and political innovations taking place during that actual period.
And then later in the film, MacFarlene's supposedly enlightened and modern-thinking character suddenly reverts back to making jokes about the American Indian people (something someone of his period is likely to do), but then later still he actually gets adopted by an Indian tribe because of his enlightened approach to Indian/American relations.
I would also suggest that his jokes about "Black men" and their body preferences in women, and the Islamic "death chant" were grossly demeaning, if not racist.
And don't get me started on the montage towards the end of the film, which largely felt like a series of skits that didn't fit anywhere else in the movie, so they jammed them pointlessly into the montage because they didn't have the good sense to know they weren't actually that funny.
All in all it was a confused effort that just wasn't that good.
Homeland (2011)
A great show that would be perfect if Carrie was portrayed better
I really enjoy this show, it's well written, well acted... well almost.
Claire Danes' portrayal of Carrie Mathison is the one thing that really lets the show down.
The overly emotive portrayal starts to become really grating after a while, and then when her character lapses into genuine moments of psychotic breakdown, the impact is lost because it's not really that much different to how the character is portrayed when she's in a state of normalcy.
It also lifts you out of the show, because you find yourself regularly questioning how someone so obviously unstable could ever maintain a career in either the military or the intelligence field.
Just compare her character to that of Saul Berenson (played deftly by Mandy Patinkin) - he is supposed to be her mentor, the older and wiser mirror image of her, yet, clearly he has a temperament that is totally the opposite to Carrie's - and that's precisely the issue, because it is his temperament that makes him so expert and suited to the field of intelligence.
Carrie comes across more like a crazed conspiracy theorist than a boring data analyst whose methodical temperament makes her so good at intelligence gathering and interpretation.
It's a shame, because all of the other central characters, and even the lesser parts, are acted to perfection, and in a way that leaves you believing the plot that is unfolding in front of you.
Glorious 39 (2009)
A poorly executed attempt at something that could have been great
Glorious 39 has everything necessary for the makings of a great film, but for some unknown reason things got lost in translation and the finished product failed to deliver (and no, this is DEFINITELY not on par with Atonement!)
The film starts slow and the first 20 minutes just don't seem to hit their beats. Then, once the plot begins to engage the viewer a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions begin to arise.
We also get this rather strange attempt (or at least, what appears to be an attempt) to draw parallels between WW2 England and the modern war on terror (most notably the indefinite detention without charge, and the overarching state surveillance). These things just don't make a lot of sense though - were they a poorly executed attempt at commentary on post 9/11 geopolitics? Or were they meant to be plot devices to ramp up the tension and threat to our main protagonist? Either way, neither version of events is executed particularly well.
Then there is the death of Lawrence - an event which should have really mattered to us as an audience, except it didn't, because Lawrence was barely developed as a character and as a result the audience never has a chance to care about him or even connect with him. He just doesn't get anywhere near enough screen time (in a film that has a running time of 2 hours!) and so his death doesn't have any real impact for us.
To top things off, the movie concludes with an ending that is an anti-climax, and makes little real sense (the use of a final shot of young Anne even seems to indicate that at least someone involved in this film was concerned that the execution of the plot may leave some viewers confused about who the elderly woman in the chair was, so they had to spell it out as obviously as they possibly could).
It's a real shame, because the atmosphere, acting and story concept are all top shelf - it's just a shame that the execution was so flawed.
Blue Ruin (2013)
Excellent Indie slow burner
Apart from a few forgivable imperfections (remember, this is a debut film, after all), Blue Ruin is an excellent Indie drama/thriller.
I disagree with the previous reviewer who referred to this as a movie with multiple and constant plot twists - what you get in Blue Ruin aren't actually plot twists, instead they are merely plot developments presented in a story that is told in a fashion that is not strictly linear.
This is a well shot (some creative use of visual techniques and shot selections in this film), well written, engaging film that draws you in and keeps you watching right to the very end, despite the fact that it deliberately takes in time in various places.
I couldn't help but think of Take Shelter when I watched this film - both movies have a similar stylistic sensibility, where things are not overplayed, and the lead protagonist has an eccentricity and vulnerability about them that you just can't look away from.
A great film, well worthy of the 90 minutes it takes to get through, and a clear sign that this filmmaker has a very successful future ahead of him.
Heretic (2012)
I suspect that some of the glowing reviews were written by crew members, or friends of the director
No, this not a slow burning horror, it's more like a slow paced attempt at a horror film.
No, there are not lots of scares and moments that will have you jumping out of your seat (there's a few attempts to do this, but none of them actually come off - also, someone needs to tell the director that simply turning up the volume in order to try and scare people is just annoying, especially when you do it over and over again).
No, this film is not well acted. The acting is mostly just okay, but mixed with moments of cringe-worthy acting fails.
No, this film is not well paced - in fact, in several places I almost reached for the remote to hit the fast forward button. The middle section is quite repetitive (for no good reason) with all the various visitors coming and going.
Basically this movie could have been a short film - in fact, it probably should have been - but the decision to extend it's length just turned it into a rather slow and very average attempt at horror.
Like I said earlier, I strongly suspect that the glowing reviews for this film were written by crew members, or friends of the director, because this is definitely not a memorable horror film.
It's a b-grade movie at best, and while there are hints of talent and skill, they are still a wee way off coming to fruition.
Our Brand Is Crisis (2005)
Disappointing
I am an avid documentary watcher, and I had heard good things about this movie, so I went into it expecting something far greater than what was actually delivered.
Ironically that made this movie much like the political campaign it explored - a lot of hype, but very little substance.
There are some technical issues with this documentary (like the very obvious use of ADR questions), but ultimately it falls down because of the fact that it presents a premise that really doesn't have a lot of merit.
Effectively this film tries to blame the US political marketing firm for the violence and unrest that followed after their candidate won the Bolivian election.
I'm not from the US, and I'm no fan of political spin doctors, but at the end of the day, it's quite absurd to try and blame the campaign strategists for the leadership failings of the man who they were paid to see elected into office.
At the end of the day this documentary completely fails to explore the fact that the other two candidates in this election almost certainly had their own campaign advisers proposing similar PR strategies to give them the edge on the campaign trail.
In the end this documentary felt a little unbalanced, and a little bit pointless, in the sense that it didn't really offer much in the way of deep insight into the election in which this campaign unfolded.
Paradox Alice (2012)
B grade rubbish
Um yeah, where to start...
Terrible acting
Horrific script ("the guy's got an ego the size of a pork sausage" - whoever wrote that line does realize that pork sausages are quite small, right?!)
CGI that looks like it came from an early 90's kids TV show
Clichéd concepts stolen from every other sci-fi film you've ever seen
A spaceship on an important earth-saving mission that has less crew than a domestic airline flight (4 in total!)
A comically bad set - there's wooden shelves in the cockpit!
A soundtrack that won't be selling a single track on iTunes
My advice: avoid this B grade mess at all costs, or alternately, get a couple of friends together for a few drinks and then laugh your way through this cringe-worthy debacle.