Change Your Image
Misteriomag32
Reviews
Infection (2005)
I'm confused...
I spotted the DVD on a store near my home, and since I'm a "cheesy horror movie/alien flicks" addict, I wondered how good it was. It even had two award mentions on the cover (I don't remember what festival it won) so I figured "Hey this might be good". So I bought it (for five euros) and I came here to IMDb to check out some reviews. Here, either people bashed the movie to say it was bad, or people said the movie was a wonderful feat in indie movies bla, bla. I then played the DVD, not thinking about any review I had read, with an open mind, and not expecting anything at all.
Man... I don't' like being this critical, but the movie was genuinely bad... OK, I'm just going to give out some pointers of what I thought:
1-Acting/dialog: The acting was so confusing... sometimes the actors did a decent job, but there were scenes were I could spot no effort at all from them! The dialog was even worst... I think it was probably the aspect I most disliked in the whole movie. The talking in between characters seemed... off. Not just bad, but far away from the actual happenings in the movie. The monologues of the female character, although well delivered, became boring and annoying in a little while... But of course the most ridiculous aspect was the... "aliens" or the "infected"... I wont even comment on that one, just going to say that it was absolutely ridiculous and took the entire mood away from the picture; 2-Visuals: the strongest aspect in the movie... if you forget the awful FX and light flashes they used to simulate explosions or what the hell they were supposed to be. The "camera in car" aspect was quite cool actually, but they didn't even used the environment to inspire fear or dread. They left that to cheap sound and video FX and the three "infected" characters. The movie becomes boring in so many scenes...; 3-Sound: Talk about editing... this movie has no problems in showing how weakly edited it was. From computer sounds imitating the forest animals to the "alien dialog"... ah...
So what did I like in the movie... (SPOILERS) the only thing I really liked and it was actually quite scary was the succession of two scenes where the car is still and you spot something/someone walking in a distant. At first I really thought it was me seeing things, but when the character realizes that the "figures" coming towards her were her own reflection, I was surprised! Pretty creepy idea done well! Apart from that... I had an awful time.
And I don't recommend this to anyone... not even "teen get together" because you can't even laugh at this...
I give it a solid 2. Only some technical achievements worked here... apart from that... yeah... nothing
Waking Life (2001)
A wonderful gem!
Warning: not everyone will enjoy this movie. Why? Because it merely shows conversations. The whole movie is the constant dialog between different characters. And is this a bad thing? Hell no! Richard Linklater has created a superb gem! A emotional, strange, delusional philosophical film that will make the viewer's head turn around and think.
The plot is rather simple: an unnamed character is trapped in his own dreams. He wants to wake up, but he can't. Along his way, he meets a large array of characters. With each character, comes a conversation. They go trough all sorts of topics, from philosophical to political: this movie is like a big review of our own world.
I loved this movie! And I hope some people will dare themselves into diving trough the strange ride that Richard Linklater has prepared for us!
Coisa Ruim (2006)
Disappointment....
This movie had so much potential... I really don't know what to say, because on the first minutes I was so captivated, I thought that this was it!: Portuguese cinema took a giant leap, and who could have guessed, on the suspense/horror/supernatural genre! The photography was top notch I'd say, and the sound, the acting... all these technical elements brought to life a simply Portuguese rural town with a creepy, eerie atmosphere. Still, it seems that the people behind this project didn't go beyond that! The story seems interesting enough in the first minutes, but then it just keeps dragging on! No real scary scenes at all! And the ending? It was predictable (sorry, it was! Everything pointed out to that one character I won't mention here), and it just didn't justify the time wasted on the movie.
Overall: technically good, but too dull and dead to even recommend someone to see it. I'm really sad, because I'm still waiting for the big jump of the Portuguese cinema... and this one was not it.
Next time, try to focus more on the story.