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A Man Called Otto (2022)
CHEEEEESY
An awful twaddle of an agenda-driven movie totally not worth watching. Racial issues - check. Transgender issues - check. Disabled people issues - check. Animal wellbeing issues - check. Affordable housing issues - check, etc. Etc. A boring, predictable, slowly-dragging waste of effort, half-assed acting, mediocre camera work, dull locale - also check. Very unfortunately, Tom Hanks has lost his acting talent right after Cast Away. Every movie with him acting since then was a disappointment. Other characters are nobodies or annoying, as is the case of Marianna Treviño.
The movie has clearly been shot for just two purposes: push the political agenda of today and squeeze some tears (and of course dollars) out of the audience. There's no art in such cinema, and it's a real pity that we get more and more of such garbage these days.
Empire of Light (2022)
Don't waste your time in spite it's Sam Mendes
Switched it off after the first hour. This twaddle has nothing to do with and has nothing to say about filmmaking or cinema-going experience. It's a shallow and predictable mediocre opus on migration issues and middle-age sexual frustrations. What a flop after the briliant "1917"! Actors look and talk like some crudely carved dolls, I've no idea where that Oscar nomination came from. Colin Firth and Toby Jones should've abstained from acting in this one. I rarely stop watching a movie before even half of it has passed and I know that I should've finished it to form a more substantiated opinion, but it was just too much for me to bear. My advice to all: if you are deeply interested in the issues of racial discrimination and sexual depravity of the middle-aged in the 80s, go for it and watch this flick. If you are expecting a "feast for movie aficionados", abstain.
Greenland (2020)
Waste of time for some, solid entertainment for others
The enjoyment of this flick would depend totally upon a) one's IQ or b) disposition (that's less permanent, ha ha). If you prefer (or in the mood to) watch a work of art that tells a story of a comet about to hit the Earth, see Melancholia. Should you just want to kill a couple of precious hours of your life, opt for Greenland. Sometimes it's OK to watch something unpretentious and lowbrow, just don't make it a habit.
On the Rocks (2020)
Lame and miscast
Depth-wise, not even comparable to Lost In Translation. Nice father - daughter relationship study though thanks to the marvelous Bill Murray. Total lack of chemistry between Rashida Jones and... what's his name? Let me see... Marlon Wayans. Who the heck is he? A football player? Not an actor, at any rate. Totally miscast. Oh, maybe it's the quota thing (you know what I mean).
Sofia, I used to love your filmmaking. Get your act together, please.
4 Tage im Mai (2011)
Definitely not for kvass patriots
I found out about this movie from an article in one of the notorious Russian tabloids. The article was oozing bile condemning "traitors" from the Ministry of Culture who gave 50 million rubles to the triumvirate of producers from Germany, Russia and Ukraine. The author claimed that the film was a pack of lies and that it insulted the "true patriots" and so on and so forth. After the article came the readers' comments and it is an easy guess what the tone of the majority of those was... I felt very sad because I had to admit that the Soviet and, later, Russian propaganda works, and works splendidly. The people have completely lost the ability to think for themselves, to look for alternative information, and to analyze it. They won't even listen to the truth roared directly into their ears. The avalanche of truth that came down on them in the beginning of perestroyka only made them cover their ears and pretend that nothing had happened in the history that could have overturned their little cozy cabin made of lies and self-deception. And the point is not even that the story behind the movie is true or false, it might well be both, but that the audience is not prepared to accept ANYTHING but the depiction of the glorious red army soldiers saving desperate children and housewives from the murderous hands of the Nazis. That they did, of course, no doubt about it, but there was other truth as well, and mountains of it... 4 Tage im Mai tries to uncover just a little bit of that truth hidden beneath a heavy pack of glossy posters of inculpable red army liberators. But any grown man should be wise enough to understand that the world and all that's in it is not just black and white, and the human history has been demonstrating this since its beginning. Watch this movie and decide for yourself if you want to believe it, but don't fail to understand that it is about hard reconciliation and toilsome forgiveness, and that's why it is not inviting to pick sides. Once my granddad's sister, an ethnic German who was born in Russia (and paid for it), told me a story. Her downstairs neighbor, a decorated war veteran, came to her apartment drunk and in tears and confessed that during the war he had never pointed his rifle at any nazi, but had killed tens of his fellow soldiers who tried to flee from the battlefield, overwhelmed by the superior enemy numbers. He served in SMERSH. I wish the director of this movie would make a film about that.
The Grey (2011)
The title of this movie should be Lack of Grey Matter
*** SPOILERS*** A lot of users already pointed out that this flick is completely unrealistic, so I will not elaborate on that. But the biggest problem with this movie, however, is not that it's unrealistic, but that there's no one to relate to, no one to really care about. Who were these crudely carved dolls of the characters? A bunch of witless jackasses who had had no lives anyway. The wolves had more interesting personalities than those ignorami. They deserved to be prey. Wolves had a team and a team-leader, they had an objective and the wits to reach it, that's why they succeeded. The oilmen were pathetic, sad zombies who (as they themselves put it) drilled holes all day and then soaked their faces in booze. No morals, no faith, no ambitions... To paraphrase Hannibal Lecter, "Best thing for them, really, the therapy was going nowhere..."
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Far better than Matrix
I think that The thirteenth floor is far superior to Matrix. Actually, I almost walked away from the first of Wachowski's "masterpiece", so hollow and childish and CGI-ridden it seemed. The thirteenth floor has superb acting, great locations and touching music (especially in the scene when the "end of the world" is discovered by Doug). There is great chemistry between the main characters, and the dialogue is very believable and authentic all along. It is surprising that there are no plot holes in a relatively complex story. This movie is for adults, not for post-puberty greenhorns (that's Matrix' audience). No offense, it's just an opinion of a grown, experienced person.