Change Your Image
david-herz-901-38916
Reviews
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: The Murmuring (2022)
Masterful and healing treatment of grief and loss
As the eighth episode of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities this gem did not redeem the series it rather gave me a breath of fresh air, a feeling of redemption. While the seven previous episodes are gory and ghastly beyond bearing this portrait of a couple's grief is not only beautifully filmed but displays natural beauty in a way worthy of a National Geographic documentary, all the while blending this magical phenomenon into the story line , mixing magic with repressed feeling and the liberating possibilities of hallucinations, of all things.
It really is a gem by the director who did Jennifer Kent who did the Babadook, a liberating, moving and beautifully staged production. Thank you Jennifer Kent.
Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia (2012)
Sublime and as deep as they come
This episode is so extraordinary a piece of filmmaking that all the plaudits can be summed up in: Go see it. If it does not move you then you are suffering from serious emotional deficit. In a worst case scenario you will at least emerge with a method to determine whether or not someone has feelings for you. The actors are thrilling, the twists, bewitching, the exchanges, mesmerizing. Would that any other 90 minute long crime drama could pretend to half this much intensity, emotional turbulence and surprise. I had tears in my eyes at the end and indeed, like so many of the other ecstatic reviews, the only sound that came to my lips was: Wow!
Boîte noire (2021)
A well done thriller
Careful a few spoilers, and I admit there was one disappointment for me that I won't go into, but overall this is one fine piece of gripping cinema. It plays well with suspicion, paranoia, devotion, ambition, talent and of course love. I wonder how believable this scenario is because it does remind me in chilling ways of the two Boeing 737 MAX 8 disasters with their MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) which parallels the MHD du film. How vulnerable are our modern aircraft to onboard hacking considering the degree to which wiring, electronic frequencies and the means to control the apparatuses connected to them can easily come together, in the hands of an accomplished computer expert. Great viewing.
Titans (2018)
If you like gratuitous murder, this is for you!
Truly disgusting gratuitous violence of a positively bestial nature but some people will love it because it's about a group of people with really cool superpowers and that forgives everything, right? You know might is right, right? The bad guys are slavs or something like that and this is only after one episode. The question to ask ourselves is what possibly draws people to this kind of series. Perhaps it's a strictly American thing about the amount of violence we find perfectly acceptable, well, I for one, don't.
There are a plethora of superpower series with Spider Man perhaps being one of the most endearing creations, but this, frankly, I ask can a story be told without brutally rubbing out a fair percentage of the cast in just the first episode? Does this resemble life in America? Is this why there are 70.1 million semiautomatic handguns and rifles in America and hundreds of millions of other guns, not used for hunting? There is no grace, there is no finesse, the dialog is serviceable but no more. I guess this is what some people call entertainment. No thank you.
Devil in Ohio (2022)
Deeply Annoying
With a fine cast but the sort of instruction to actors that turns them into mindless puppets rather than interesting humans. The mother is so nice she ignores her children, the troubled guest summons the devil in a dinner prayer, and the father is the usual obtuse, problem and emotion denying useless hunk. Everyone is made to be so stupid because you see this is meant to be drawn out and we are not supposed to receive any answers to our puzzlement. I call it bland manipulation of the audience since we have see all this so often. It could have been good...The mother sees this terrifying wound and no one questions anything, a really creepy sheriff who refuses to identify his presence is let go with nary a worry. If you are satisfied with let everyone be stupid so that the story can get underway thanks to all the unconscious bumbling then this is entertainment for you. Never a problem with the cast...
Lucifer: Chloe Does Lucifer (2017)
The Worst Episode Yet
Having enjoyed this series immensely up until now I am wondering what drug the writers took to write something so off key, incoherent and logically inconsistent. In this one episode Lucifer becomes a babbling idiot losing all the intuition and intelligence and experience he had shown and accumulated until then. Chloé is disgracefully superficial. We see her following Lucifer's instructions through her earbud like a mindless robot and not at all like the brilliant detective we have come to expect, and believing her to be devoid of social graces goes against everything we have seen her do in many many episodes. As for Linda, the psychiatrist, being strongly affected by the fact she is not affected by her deeply disturbed former husband's death is convincing up to a point but not very because this immensely experienced and helpful women who has helped so many characters in this series now appears to lose it all before being consoled by Amenadiel sympathetic amenities. It was just an excuse to get her to lie down fully clothed on the beach sand. Nice but the crisis is inconsistent. In other words the writers ignored the personalities, the development, the experience of these three characters and just made them play parts that suited the writers' fancy.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
The power of advertising and nostalgia
There is always an explanation...and many reviewers have given them. Indulge me and let me get this disappointment off my chest and into the universe. The extraordinarily high rating given this episode, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is surely linked in part to nostalgia and massive advertising. It is as if we couldn't dislike such a fixture of our childhood even if it is being served up again covered with crème chantilly and so many other frills designed to cover up the truth that the dish is tasteless. There is plenty of humanity in earlier episodes, the Nytimes.com review is a mystery here. And please tell me if I missed it but there is less than nothing new or original in this episode. The new young stars are compelling but the out of the vacuum storyline is not. The only humanity I saw in the film is that Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill were allowed to age, graciously or not depending on your personal projections. We do have the generalized massacre of anything enemy, as well as defenseless planets. In sheer numbers these virtual deaths put practically every other high body count movie to shame. The carnage is rarely graphic however. The first 'moment of blood' is when John Boyega realizes that his fellow Stormtrooper is indeed flesh and blood, however, there are no indications that all these billions? of people being blown away, even though it looks so clean and spectacular, you know using the power of the sun to annihilate planets, are indeed people... This said, annihilating billions is a SF trope (see Dune, etc.) and the real problems with this film lie mostly elsewhere. Disney can make great films, using its name or one of its subsidiary studios but this film, which I am sure has already spawned many video games, was made to make money big time, and little else. Which is disappointing.
Dracula Untold (2014)
Unfairly reviewed by critics and some normal people
I do not understand the venomous reviews from critics and a few normal people. There's nothing wrong with this film and a good deal right. It has an original twist. That Vlad Tepes would become Vlad Dracul, son of the devil, to save his people from the Turks is a choice I have not often seen in vampire movies. There is a good deal of historical fact in the story, among other things that Vlad Tepes was given over by his father to the Sultan to guarantee the father's good behavior, and that this experience did not endear the Turks to Vlad. The actors speak Turkish, the camera is good, the acting is impeccable and the vampire tropes are used well. Of course it is Murnau's fault that vampires are destroyed by light since legend has it that they are not at their best but hardly holocausted by the sun's rays. I enjoyed the film, I would have given it a 7,5 but cannot so gave it an 8 in response to the misery of the reviews.