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Bokeh (2017)
Instagram influencers the movie
This is a movie about an Instagram influencer and her photographer boyfriend that don't want to share all the photo ops with anyone else so they stage an apocalypse. Why have to deal with the pesky locals or other peoples Instagram shoots just go all in for the apocalypse and it's all about you.
Ok so that's probably not what the filmmakers were trying to get at but it was impossible for me not to think this constantly while watching the otherwise boring plot and dialog. The poor quality of the acting and script definitely did not help, for most of the movie I felt like I was watching social media personalities trying to build rep by throwing together a movie instead of losing myself in the story like I usually do.
There are tons of social media cliches: shots of her hair blowing with majestic landscapes in the background over and over again, the camera following behind her as she walks down scenic paths, shots of her where she turns her head for a perfect profile, tons of dramatic expression shots, tons of scenic drives or them just sitting in scenic places, and his Rolleiflex camera. Of course a lot of movies feature natural beauty but it's way overdone.
The most hilarious part of the movie was when the climax starts with him finding a stack of prints of pictures that he had taken and of course they are square.
Viking (2016)
Another take
I agree with many of the other critical reviews on the quality of this movie, there are many things that are lacking including dialog, writing, lighting, coherent plot etc. I'm not sure why I sat through the whole thing but here we are. It's almost bad enough to be good, almost.
One thing that really stood out to me other than those was that this is a Christian conversion movie, by that I mean it is trying to convert viewers and not just a movie about conversion. It would also make sense that they took so long an spent so much money on this film if that was the film makers actual objective.
It starts off very dark (scene lighting is dark and the content is dark), chaotic, depressing, and has a hopeless feeling. Over the course of the movie it becomes progressively lighter, more hopeful, optimistic, and organized, with the final 15 minutes being pure Christian evangelism. They did a good job of showing the advantages of typical Christianity over whimsical, nonsensical, and sometimes violent pagan worship. I guess you just have to ignore all the extreme violence that also happened in the name of Christianity in that era.
I very much felt like every other aspect of the movie was secondary to selling Christianity. Even given how terrible of a movie it is I felt like they did a fairly good job of that. If you don't plan on converting or don't want to re-affirm your beliefs this movie is probably not for you.
Merchants of Doubt (2014)
Entertaining and engaging and does a great job of illuminating the issue
I made the mistake of reading the user reviews before watching and was expecting a mediocre film. Thankfully it was much better than that. I found it to be thoroughly interesting and entertaining while doing a great job of detailing the depth of scumbaggery and deception behind the climate change denialist movement.
The imagery, interview editing, flow of the narrative, choice of people to interview, camera work were all outstanding. I highly recommend that anyone who is not already committed to denialism watch it. Some might find some parts shocking but overwhelmingly the evidence points to the views expressed in this film being correct.
Judgment (2001)
Pushes a fairly extreme Christian viewpoint
I wanted to get an idea of what American Christian cinema was like and decided to watch this. This movie divided the world into "good Christians" and everyone else. Everyone else is portrayed as having a permanent sneer on their faces and basically devoid of everything good in humanity. That is an incredibly bigoted and ignorant viewpoint. I get that the movie is trying to tell a story about the anti-Christ manipulating mankind but it takes the us vs them aspect way too far. All the usual tropes about the big bad government oppressing Christians, a world government, and "good Christians" being the only truly good people are in there. So I guess if you grew up in a non- Christian country or family you are out of luck, sorry pick the right religion next time.
On top of that the movie is just not good, the acting is amateurish, the sets are crude, camera work is B- movie grade, and the story feels very forced and contrived.
Soul Surfer (2011)
Religious propaganda
Do not watch this unless you want Christianity pushed on you for a couple hours straight. This movie is religious propaganda plain and simple. I'll give them that it's not overt, instead faith based or evangelical phrases permeate the dialog.
On top of its obvious ulterior motive this is not a good movie, the acting and dialogue are contrived and forced, the plot is weak and the directing is garbage. This is 100% a B movie and a charmless one at that.
Stay away, unless you are looking for Christian cinema, then it might be a good fit if you can overlook how poor of a movie it is.