derekcurrie's Reviews

Frailty (2001)

8/10

5 January 2021

Warning: Spoilers

Are we all just meat for the slaughter? Whose slaughter?

A lot is left to the observer's imagination in this methodical and morbid portrait of humanity. However this story is interpreted, the final question is: How can human beings think and behave this way? What are we? What made us this way?

I found this to be a well made budget film with very fine acting and simple, adequate directing. The music was good and fit the plot. The visuals were all well captured as well as the sound. What's left wanting, quite deliberately, is what exactly is going on in the plot of the story? There are enough 'clues' left around, nicely discussed in other reviews here, to leave the viewer wondering. Who's fooling who? Was the story told about this family fabricated? Seeing as so many clues back up the base story told by the narrator, is this person actually doing god's work? Is this story actually saying there are demons on Earth as well as demon slayers? This isn't another episode of the CW program 'Supernatural'. This is outright ambiguous and horrifying to consider.

From my own point of view, this is a story about how brutally insane we humans can be in our religious concepts of what is 'absolutely true'. We can justify almost anything, no matter how wrong. We elected a psychopath to the US presidency, with all the predictable outcomes, we can be so blind. 'Charismatic', 'evangelical' 'Christians' vehemently supported and defended this demonic person as 'sent by god'. So why not have fellow humans believe in demon mythology, go all rapturous with visions when they touch someone they perceive to be a 'demon'? We are so frail in our minds. The Meik shall inherit the Earth? We are all just meat in Meat, Texas and our sheriff is a prolific serial killer, our protector and defender? I'm left considering this to be a deeply cynical film about mankind's worst of enemies, its greatest frailty, our own deceptive truth conjuring minds. Noise hides our frail identities from our fellow humans.

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Triangle (2009)

1/10

A Movie About Masochism...

31 August 2020

... Because by the end, the audience wishes either the main character or the author would kill themselves and put you out or your misery. That's about it. The genre of the plot, the inexplicable time loop, is usually fun and interesting. This variation has a few fun turns. But the progress of the time loop cycles around a whopping huge and bottomless plot hole that flushes away anything good about this film. I found it infuriating to watch. It's not that it's poorly made. It's that the plot is so poorly contrived. Save yourself from masochism and skip this extraordinary mess.

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Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

5/10

The original plot, before the butchery, actually made sense.

11 December 2018

If you search around, you'll find in the Internet the original script for Bloodline as well as the 'Workprint' videos saved by the film's original director. To be honest, the original script needs a couple more drafts in order to properly explain the story to the audience. Too much of it was left vague and poorly explained. But the plot did make sense when both the script and initial footage are considered together. It's hard to know exactly what happened to drive away the film's director. But what happened afterward is a classic Hollywood mess. Core points of the plot were ignored, others ripped away, others turned inside out to the point of blatantly contradicting basic Hellraiser plot and character concepts. Despite the idiotic mess made of the plot, much of it is beautifully done. It was the very last of the Hellraiser films with any level of inventiveness and class. As such, it's worth watching. But raspberries to the dolts who bolted together the elegant remnants of this film into a lumbering ignoramus.

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Sleepy Hollow (2013–2017)

5/10

The Paradox

20 January 2014

I can't think of a recent TV program with a more stupid premise or a more imitative concept. Current USA 'Sherlock Holmes' (already a bad idea) ripoff much? I should be regurgitating profusely while watching this abomination. And yet, the paradox: Two of my favorite writer/producers (Orci and Kurtzman) have saved it and turned it into something fun. I can't hate it! I don't understand how that's possible. It's beautiful bad taste; A compelling joke.

It has some decent acting as well! Thank you for including the great John Noble. I look at the ridiculous 18th century clothes on Ichabod Crane in the 21st century, listen to his pseudo Sherlock Holmes script lines and want to wretch. Then something remarkable happens and the plot thickens! Sweet and sour television. I bet the kids love it.

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Stars Earn Stripes (2012– )

1/10

Murder, Mayhem and Immorality for Cash and Fame

29 August 2012

War is the worst and most horrific behavior of humanity. This game show celebrates the strategies, instruments and effects of war. The result is desensitization and dehumanization. I'd rather stay humane. Please cancel this morally corrupt perpetration and keep its memory as one of the sign posts of television gone beyond acceptability, taste and restraint. Shameful garbage. A sign of the times.

Place yourself as an innocent citizen of an invaded country. BRRRRRRRROOOM. In drive the tanks, the transport vehicles, the guns, the planes, the helicopters, the big guns, the little guns, the Shock and Awe of potent weapons of death and destruction. The people, men and women, driving that gear and wielding those weapons are enjoying themselves as they compete to be the best marksmen, the creators of the biggest booms and explosions. Move in! Move out! Let's go! G.I. Joe! KAPOW. There go your children. PiwPiwPiw! Pick off your neighbors. BOOM! Your house goes flying into the air in flaming pieces. It's the Americans! And they LIKE IT! And you've figured out that they've gone insane and inhumane. How can you respond to these acts of jovial injustice, contestant murder, compensated destruction and hijinks horror?

Thanks 'Stars Earn Stripes' for helping to inspire another generation of retribution and devolved humanity. Let's do better.

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Hook (1991)

1/10

There is no worse film ever made; Would that it never existed.

24 October 2011

It physically nauseates me to watch this grotesque horror of cinematography. What puts the bowel movement icing on the cake is that it was nominated for several awards and actually won two of them. More than any other film in existence, this film proves the inherent disease of bad taste running rampant in what we call 'Hollywood'. There has been no more unpardonably bad film ever made. J.M Barrie, author of the eternally classic Peter Pan, will be spinning in his grave until this catastrophe of bad ideas is wiped from human memory. I'd give 'Hook' a negative star rating if it would cause this fetid celluloid abomination to be sucked into a black hole and deleted from time. Watching 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' would be a relief.... You get the idea. ;-D

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The Forgotten (2004)

And When the Sky Was Opened by Richard Matheson

23 October 2011

That sense of déja vu you have watching this film may well go back as far as December 11, 1959. This is the date listed when the Twilight Zone episode 'And When the Sky Was Opened' was first aired on television. Rod Serling wrote the script from a short story by Richard Matheson. This author wrote several stories for Twilight Zone as well as many books and other stories that sci-fi fans will know. These include 'I Am Legend', 'The Incredible Shrinking Man', 'Hell House', 'What Dreams May Come', 'Little Girl Lost' (used on Twilight Zone') and 'Nightmare at 20.000 Feet' (used on both the Twilight Zone TV program and movie). IOW: This is a used storyline, albeit with another ending. Considering the copyright warz of our current era, I am surprised that at least an attribution was not given to Matheson along side the name of the listed author of 'The Forgotten'.

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