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steppeck
Reviews
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
Astoundingly bad. Please read a book instead.
The zero dimensional script is as shallow as the VFX projected onto the green screen. VFX which, by the way, is as soulless as the characters and their artificially eye-watered emotions.
To top it all, the action sequences are dismal and nonsensical. Yes, we know the bad guys are always bad shots, but our stormtroopers have anti-target missiles that are so efficient in avoiding their prey that point blank range is too far away.
This film is a supremely pitiful effort. Even the editing and framing is clunky, but I guess that is congruent with the clammer of clichéd and predictable dialogue.
One has to wonder how this gets made. How many millions of dollars wasted. More so, how many millions of hours of human endeavour wasted, either in being ploughed into making this nonsense, or, for its viewers, never being realised in any meaningful way - myself included.
Philly D.A. (2021)
A documentary masterpiece
Filmed during the untruth era of Trump, Philly DA is an important documentation of a failing justice system and its glacial reform. Battling and transforming endemic institutional emotionalism, Larry Krasner and his team are shown to be flawed heroes attempting to apply social science to real world decay.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Comparisons reveal the odious.
I'm sickened by the fawning over this spectacularly empty drivel.
So utterly characterless for something purporting to reflect on the nature of human consciousness. No character = no script, of course. The original revels subtly in the exploration of how identity and memory are intrinsic to one another. How the objects we surround ourselves persuade us of our identity. Gosling's apartment in contrast, characterless. Literally. There is no character that lives there.
Perhaps they feared that a character, with an actually believable life, in the film might detract from the computerised holographic eye candy companion? Did Harvey Weinstein have some say in this element? This avatar of desire has potential for commentary, but resolves as an astonishing endorsement of computerised companionship as a viable alternative to human relationship. In our dystopian future, as the capacity for community dissolves, this is our great hope; the post prostitute/hologram wife sex - "coffee?" - results in smiles all round. This element to the film made me a little physically sick and highly sympathetic to militant feminism.
The film's clumsy attempts at visual poetry pale into comparison with the original - proving the point that the soul of the work is what creates a spectacle with substance, not computing power.
Jared Leto's Kurtz impression might have fared better had their been any craft in the script. Perhaps if they'd gotten Rutger Hauer to improvise some lines there'd have been some semblance of originality, instead of memorable quotes such as "You do not know...pain."
The score to the movie was effective, but lacked the nuanced, cohesive beauty of Vangelis' offering in the original; of course it suffers from the hodge podge on screen. There can be no artistic combinatorial explosion when so many elements are lacking in subtlety, originality...spirit. This deficit being exemplified by the Power Rangers finale...PEOW PEOW - HIIIIYA!!!
And there is no spirit. This post-modern parable embodies and endorses the pseudo-scientific reductionist view of humanity as essentially worthless and doomed. It is an unrelentingly shallow and joyless indulgence with plot holes you could drive a bus through (it's a real memory... then it must be mine! *BOOOOM* - great work detective!).
To give the team the benefit of the doubt, let's say that some elements may be excused by the use of focus groups by the studios. It wouldn't take much to alter the attitude of Gosling to his 3D spouse to highlight to the viewer the 1D nature of his relationship. Maybe those takes are on the cutting room floor, maybe there'll be a superior director's cut. I doubt it'll be any the better, the changes needing to be radical; including shaving about an hour off the running time.
Perhaps the director's cut will appear before the sequel. Yes, thanks to the introduction of a rebellion, we can look forward to the Matrix style "Bladerunner reloaded", "Bladerunner revolutions"...I wonder whether Netflix or Amazon will make the series? #justanotherfranchise
In the year 2019, I believe this effort will suffer horribly from hindsight; unlike the majestic original...and we'll always have the original. A memory of exemplary filmic storytelling, indelibly etched in my mind forming part of my identity, available for generations to come...
1*
Elle (2016)
Stultifying. Predictable. Shallow. Pretentious.
I can only wonder at the attraction of this hackneyed French social satire with its violent rape twist. Indeed I found it as funny, subtle and perceptive as what I imagine an actual violent rape to be. To clarify, that's not at all. The only reason I can score this cinematic abhorrence one out of ten, is the protagonist is female, middle aged and sexually alive. That's where the merits end. She is an emotionless, one dimensional superhero who, I guess, we are supposed to admire for her stoicism. The film is threaded with the post modern reductionist themes of the preposterously realised pitfalls of religious sexual repression. All of the characters are dislike-able. To say I didn't care about any of them would be to give them more energy than I care to. The weakly written caricatures (the botoxed mother, the sad divorcée academic, the steely business women, the cheating best friend's husband, the computer geek with a crushzzzzzzzzz) dryly wind their tedious way through a plot so contrived into cliché as to bewilder. The only real emotion we are exposed to, clumsily at that, is that of the son, whose travails are witlessly shaped into an utterly preposterous sub-plot. I think his story was supposed to be the comedy in the piece. It was probably after the first hour that I became so bored that I wanted to leave, but I was sat front and centre at the superb Clapham Playhouse with some travel bags at that. I thought, "It's probably nearly over so I'll wait it out..." I was wrong. There was another hour of pointless meandering events occurring within a dis- believable framework of base motives belonging to utterly charmless "characters". How can a film that graphically challenges concepts of sexual violence be so boring? Because it fails to challenge anything. Utterly. Maybe making sexual violence boring was Paul Verhoeven's objective all along, if so, then this is a tour de force.
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Despicable people wallowing in their own excrement
I enjoyed Iron Man 1. I enjoyed the fact that the main character was brought down to earth with a big nasty bump, confronted by the reality that he sponsors, and that sponsors his reprehensible lifestyle.
That the sequel should suggest that this lifestyle he 'enjoys' is to be endorsed and aspired to, automatically places it into the category of artless social propaganda. It is, essentially a tale of unlikable people with the power of life and death over others, battling it out for the right for that power. Yes, Starks realises his dad loved him really, and that he really ought to cut back on the partying, knuckle down and join the 'team America' and and fight the 'bad guys'. Those bad guys? Well, we'll see who they are in Iron Man 3. Probably some other desperately impoverished group who are misled into believing that they can actually fight against the obscenely rich and powerful of this world. The fools. See Chris Morris' film 'Four Lions' for their story...
Festen (1998)
Exceptional
I cannot think of a better film that I have seen; beautiful, visceral, profound and intense, it is a masterpiece. All of the rules of the Dogme manifesto are adhered to and fully justified as the outcome is a uniquely engaging piece of art. Incredibly atmospheric, the natural light compliments the subject matter and the performances which are all marvellous examples of naturalism. The themes tackled in the film are urgent and challenging and the film snakes its way through a plot the endpoint of which you can never be certain. Moving, alarming and ultimately idealistic, I believe it is as close to a perfect piece of art in the medium of cinema as there has ever been...
The Ugly Truth (2009)
Hurting myself
How to describe the appalling mess that is this thing- "Film" for what it's worth? Ugly cannot cover it. If there is such thing as 'make-up' sex there also needs to be 'cleanse my memory' sex. And I need it now. Is there such a thing as a hate-gasm? I have enjoyed sex regularly for quite some time but this film may have killed my libido forever. We had a drinking game designed especially for this film; take a shot every time we felt violated or if someone within the film jumped up and down in obviously fake joy. We are f****ing RAT-AS**D. Why are there no negative stars? Why can I not rate into imaginary numbers? We are moving out of California because we are convinced that Jesus is going to smite down upon the entire state because of this unfunny, poorly conceived, piece of filth.