Reviews

A guy got killed. Who's the guilty one? Hmm, pretty obvious from the get go but lets watch... Actor list at least is filled with semi-famous names. Some of them play their roles routinely well, some overact. Especially Craig's accent was ridiculous and goofballing doesn't fit his persona at all. Plummer was solid and it was nice to see Don Johnson too. Rest were okay.

The film had "humorous" tone with it which was completely unnecessary. Comedy is hard and clearly it missed the mark in this one. Not just me, but the whole theatre audience laughed perhaps once. Barfing main protagonist immigrant lady wasn't funny at all and belonged to b-class family movie. Craig acting as a goofball detective was another miss (I like him nonetheless). Rest of the small "comedy" bits were all somewhat off. Just do full comedy if you intend to do so, and not half arsed like this which just gets on the way of otherwise decent movie.

The plot wasn't very original, been there, seen that, but it kept the movie going. At least to me there were practically no "twists" in the plot. I expected more and something original. What else? One thing to mention (scriptwriter thought to be funny?) is the under-aged boy who's been called as a "nazi" because of his political views. Twice, with no remorse. Sounds pretty familiar at these times doesn't it? Not cool.

Knives out has a stupid name but nonetheless is quite good representative of "murder mystery" genre movie. There was pro-feminist Star Wars, Frozen 2, and this running in theatres. I chose this and was pretty happy about it.

These types of movies are starting to get rarer and rarer. In these "woke" times we only get feminators, fembusters, and blackened new movies to please small, but loud feminist crowd. In Wrath, we still get to see epic heroes fighting fantastic monsters and have a blast. The story is pretty thin "save the world" type, but that doesn't stop one to enjoy it since the rest of the package is in good order. If you have any sense of masculinity left and you enjoy pure effect laden action movies with good actors, this one is for you. Just switch your brains off and get you popcorn ready!

If you like Luc Bessons movies and sci-fi, this movie certainly won't let you down no matter what the so called "critics" say. Visually this is one of the most impressive films to date and the richness of the universe compares that to what have you have seen in Valerian comic books. The adaptation in that sense is pretty good although everything is tuned to be a bit darker (surprise).

The plot is good and pretty well built although don't expect any Oscars on that side. Think of Avatar / Pocahontas and you are quite close. The lead actors are okay but I think they are quite far from the original tone set in the comics. I don't mind the Valerian's Keanu Reeves -voice which seem to bother some and he's overall pretty cool and solid, although clearly, he's not an A-listed actor. The minus star point goes to Laureline who is a bitch. In the comics she was very kind and always smiling etc but here, they have decided (as typical in modern action films) to make her hard to catch playing arrogant femme fatale that has only one expression throughout the film: anger. If you can look past her semi-poor acting and always hateful face, everything else in the cast and acting is good to very good. The 3D- rendered aliens are very imaginative and have lots of character.

At least to me, this beats blackened Star Wars 10-0. Go watch and decide for yourself. I hope they get enough money from this to make sequels possible.

A quick summary of the rating: Yet another reboot of Spider-man clearly intended for younger adults (teens / pre-teens) with typical modern Hollywood touch to blackwash characters. Peter Parker's stepmom is now Mexican (?), girlfriend African and his best buddy Malaysian. How about that for a zoo? Minus 2 stars for that. The actual actor for Peter aka Spidey was at least good and likable, even better so than the previous. Still far from Tobey Maquires charisma.

I don't know about others but I'm personally tired of these continuous reboots that start the whole thing over and over again. The whole core plot was about some low-level "boss" getting his hands on some "stolen" sci-fi/alien stuff to do some weapon selling business. Bringing alien stuff is just silly and out of place in Spider-man universe. At least the normally excellent Keaton as the bad guy brings some missing mojo to the movie although his character development is pretty nonexistent. As a side note, the most charismatic guy in his gang faces a quick death to give room to some boring quota actor. Besides the alien stuff, bringing the Avenger's characters to the plot is equally stupid and belongs to a completely different movie (something called "This vs That").

The sub-plots were OK and quite well balanced but none of them made me feel anything. It was like watching movie scenes that I have seen before, only with crappy actors. Comedic fatso sidekick was meh, although I liked when he dropped his "death-star". Script overall was pretty solid but the whole movie was missing The spark that makes or breaks a movie. Sad to say but this one won't be in my movie collection.

I don't even know where to start but this film was perhaps the most mind numbing action film I've seen for a long time. Definitely not worth going to theaters. That's it in a nutshell.

Fast and Furious has come a long way from the first movie to its seventh installment. Franchise is very popular and hence the high amount of sequels. I genuinely liked the first one and few sequels were okay too. But now, director James Wan tries to poke the series with his "vision" that seems more like a producers and studios vision. Director has made a lot of good horror movies which I like a lot. Seemingly the guy can technically make a fast paced action films like this one too but the end result lacks charisma and is very messy with music video style fast cuts, shaky cams, "camera rolls" and what not. This is a movie for ADHD generation for sure since its mostly hard to make out anything what's happening on the screen. Viewer is filled with constant stream of V8 growl, fist fights, missiles blowing up, cars flying trough mountain cliffs, cars flying trough sky scrapers, ... well you get the point. You can leave your brains home if you go see this. There is very little drama or calm moments and when there is such, the dialog is juvenile and ultra clichéd. "I should have done that long time ago", "I belong home and I love you forever after", etc etc. Such poor and uninspired writing. Even much poorer than I though is possible for this franchise.

So the script was pretty ridiculous with a lot taken from James Bond, Oceans Eleven series or your generic buddy agent film. I guess they are starting to run out of ideas if they have to transform a street racing subculture film into an agent romp with bullets flying. FF was never about guns or "breaking in to top secret facility with a team of highly skilled specialist". Script was just all over the place with explosions, fist fights, going to random places, throwing forgettable one liners... That saddened me. Cars and racing culture were not in the limelight. I was so begging the film to end midways since there was too much non-stop generic action that I've seen million times before. There is absolutely nothing new and memorable in this film you haven't seen in any b-class action movie already.

Physics and realism were totally forgot and people jumped from high speed moving cars to asphalt, rolled 100 meters down a mountain cliff, had head-to-head car crash, got hit multiple times with iron bar, flew from fourth floor landing on top of a car, and all this without characters barely sustaining a scratch! Wow. This is actually more superhero movie than Avengers because you can't kill those guys! I expect mindless action movies at least have a decent respect to laws of physics and human body. Oh yeah, and then there was a scene with cars dropped from a plane and landing perfectly on the tiny road many kilometers below them. Just splendid... Also the action and sfx wasn't that spectacular either and I'm truly baffled how they managed to spend 190M on this. They actually used stickers as "bullet holes" on cars in many shots. Last time I saw that being done was some Steven Seagal movie from 90s. Surely there was lots of cars being wrecked but somehow it all seemed bland perhaps because of fast cutting or shaky cam.

I will give this 4 instead of 3 just because of the touching montage and salute they put for Paul Walker at the end. Too damn shame that he passed away since I liked him a lot as an actor and he seemed like a nice guy. He would have deserved a lot better movie than this unmemorable piece of action mess.

Supporting actors Christopher Walken, Viggo Mortensen and Eric Stoltz pretty much are the only reasons for this movie not to fall utter garbage category. Lead actors Elias Koteas and Virginia Madsen are extremely wooden card board cuts with no emotion, no charisma, no nothing. Where did they find these nobodies makes me wonder? Koteas has the same dumb face for the whole movie no matter whether he finds a box full of human faces or tries to pray for God in a desperate and sentimental act. Madsen has a same monotonous repertoire for emotions and expression. Lady schoolteacher finds a burned dead human body from their schools attic and what is her reaction? Nothing. Just like she would have found a dead rat. Or maybe burned "homeless people" are so common in the states and have no human value that you can just shrug your shoulders and continue with your daily chores. That was just a one example. Sure, you can also blame the script but for some reason, I don't think Walken had any better script and he managed to improvise the hell out of his role.

While the story was interesting, it was pretty weak and there wasn't much more into this except brilliant performances from supporting actors. What a waste of a good fantasy/thriller movie. 6/10

The first thing to come in my mind about this movie is the Matrix. Same kind of enigmatic feeling, original and fresh concept, being "jacked in" to (without spoiling) another world, kick ass atmospheric soundtrack. I have to say that the ambient music was spot on and correlated well with the movie atmosphere. Great performances from each cast member and especially DiCaprio which showed again that he's more than just a pretty face. I enjoyed the presence of Cillian Murphy (the coolest baddie from Dark Knight). Plot was well written and far more intelligent than average Hollywood blockbuster. Most of the time the fiction sounded and felt very believable. Every aspect from the movie was just very well executed. If something negative must be said the action was a bit too tense and there wasn't enough breathers. It started to numb my mind at the end because action was too tightly packed. Almost whole film is a one big action scene. But still, have to give this 10/10 because this just is an epic movie. If you liked the Matrix you will definitely like this too.

This apple ipad thing was awful. I couldn't take more than 10 minutes. Graphics were straight from video game (I think my video-card could render that kind of graphics in real time). Some bitch killed in clichéd matrix -style 10 orcs without breaking sweat and same time macho guys get picked up like cherries from a tree. No dialog whatsoever in first 10 min. Plot seemed to be just shoot and smash everything that moves. I fast forwarded a lot. Still no meaningful dialog. Many modern video games as a lot better and enjoyable cut scenes than what's shown in this movie. I didn't like the anime style so i just quit watching. Final Fantasy (movie) was a lot more impressive in many ways and wasn't half bad movie. You can call FF a movie but this is just some game engine demo. 1/10 stars.

I guess I just have to write a small review of the biggest movie of the 2009. After some two weeks from watching it, I still remember most of the details, so I guess that marks it as a very good movie. The main thanks of that course belongs for the breath taking visuals which current 3D technology complimented quite well although the 3D effect taxed the overall picture sharpness.

As the movie got poured a vast amount of money to get the aesthetics to a new level the the story itself wasn't that unique. Of course it is understandable when a movie is weighting heavily on the visuals with big budget it has to make compromises for deep character development and plot originality. Film's pacing was solid, there were emotional lows and highs, no dull or unnecessary scenes. Some say Avatar is a rip off from Pocahontas, Bravehart, or whatever similar movie, and they are in a way correct but that didn't bother me so much. It's a basic conflict story between "bad" advanced civilization clashing with "good" primitive civilization with added love drama of course. The "avatar" concept although is, if not previously entirely unseen, a fresh one. Avatar is "The New World (2005)" in an alien planet if you will.

Acting was solid as it should be in this class of film. Only thing worried me a bit beforehand was scenes with arrogant "strong women" spitting their lines in some sneak preview clips. In real world if some skinny scientist woman calls hard boiled marine dumb and worthless with nasty attitude, she would find herself pretty soon collecting her teeth on the floor even if the guy is in a wheelchair. Of course Cameron's own Sigourney Weaver has to portray "bad-**s" (again) but in this time she only manages to annoy and gain zero sympathy. Particularly the very presence of Michelle Rodriguez, who was very annoying in Lost, made me worried but luckily she didn't play that tough invincible bitch role again. She was alright. Our lead star Sam Worthington was somewhat uncharismatic and lacked seriously balls (as a marine) but no big complaints from me. Zoe as a primitive alien did well but i would given her less screen time. But who would definitely had demanded more screen time was Giovanni Ribisi as the leader of the whole mining expedition. Truly a talented guy. Too bad he had so few lines.

Avatar is no Citizen Kane. Despite lacking somewhat story wise, all other production values were top notch which makes Avatar a must see on the big screen. Small TV-apparatus without 3D setup won't make the film justice. Go and see it on the big screen while you still can!

9/10