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Reviews
The Constant Gardener (2005)
Constant stupidity
Sloppy, sloppy writing, badly contrived root conflict, extremely poor plot desperately trying to justify some cliché ridden feel-good leftist rants. The colours of Africa are what they are but their beauty cannot compensate for the artsy-fartsy cinematography, the jerky camera movements intended to create a documentary like atmosphere. Nothing in this movie makes sense and neither is there any of the brutal honesty that made the City of God such a watchable movie. The only thing I find more scary than the utter stupidity of this movie is the admiration expressed for it here by other reviewers. What this movie seems to do well is pushing the emotional buttons of those who cannot think for themselves. Sorry, let's make this 'those who cannot think" - period.
Chori Chori Chupke Chupke (2001)
It's a mystery all right
The TV guide calls this movie a mystery. What is a mystery to me is how is it possible that a culture that can produce such intricate and complex classical music and brilliant mathematicians cannot produce a single film that would rise above the despicable trash level this film so perfectly represents. This is Bollywood at its best/worst, I honestly cannot tell the difference. Nauseatingly sweet, kitschy clichés on every level, story-line, situations, dialog, music and choreography. To put it bluntly, you must be a retard to enjoy it. I watched it to satisfy my cultural curiosity, but there were times when I had to walk away from it, because I could not take it any more. The only redeeming quality of the movie is the exquisite beauty of the leading actresses.
CSI: Miami (2002)
Another badly written primadonna showcase
I just finished watching the tie-in show of the new CSI-Florida.
This show hasn't even started and it is already a disaster. Bad writing, stupid clichés, hysterical behaviour, lack of logic, undefined characters, pathetic, tacky dialogs. Horrendous. I can never understand how is it possible that the people who are spending millions of dollars on an episode cannot see that. Why don't they ask someone who can tell what makes a show good? Apparently they have no clue what makes the original CSI such a good show.
Is face recognition worth that much? Caruso is a lousy actor, a stupid hysterical primadonna. Add to this some bad writing that will make him pose with a gun at some point in every show and voila: another unwatchable crap.
Les aventuriers (1967)
My personal cult - favorite
A cult classic. My personal first of cult movies. I had friends who saw it over 30 times and I clearly remember its last screening in Hungary. Ignoring all fire regulations, the manager of the theatre let in everybody who showed up. I was standing in a crowd. Like all cult movies, it speaks the angst of its time. It does not really matter what it is about, what matters is how it feels. It is difficult for me to judge it now because it still touches me and I do not know how much of that is just the nostalgic longing for the angst of my youth. Neither do I know if it is possible for someone who did not live through the sixties to relate to it. Or if it can talk to American viewers.
Cult movies can seldom be called cinematographic achievements; you will seldom find them in the books of film history, but if you want to understand the times they represent, nothing can replace them. This IS the movie of the sixties just as Easy Rider was the movie of the seventies.
A definite must see.
Striking Distance (1993)
Wait, there is more!
Bruce Willis is playing - what else - a burned out and psychologically bruised cop. And the whole world is against him. But then. against all odds....and reason....he will be - guess what?....Victorious!
There is sex in it! Abducted love interest! Corrupt cops! Car chases! Boat chases! Fist-fights! Spectacular shootouts! Sexy single mom longing for her child she had to leave behind to fulfill her duties! Deception and forgiveness! Crazed murderer! Insane moral dilemmas! But wait, there is more! Or is there? Can you think of more clichés?
......who am I kidding? Five minutes after I finished watching it, I already forgot the title. I had to look it up in the TV guide. It is THAT forgettable. If you want to watch crap, it's OK. Just find some better crap than this one. There is plenty out there.
Don't Say a Word (2001)
If you can turn off your brain, go to see it
A good thriller is clever, not contrived, but it takes some intelligence to know the difference. Intelligence that no one connected to this movie seems to possess. The plot of this movie is so incredibly stupid that the list of the holes in it would probably be longer than the screenplay itself. Fresh out of the jail criminals mounting a surveillance operation that could be the envy of the CIA; Knowing things they couldn't possibly know while unable to find out things that are a matter of public record. Frail psychologist beating the crap out of the tough bodybuilder should not even be mentioned, as such stupidities are the staple of Hollywood action movies.
I cannot say a word about the execution; it was flawlessly professional. Great shots, perfect action sequences all of which just exaggerated the mindless idiocy of the plot. Michael Douglas seems to have an affinity for these contrived contraptions. Watching this movie reminded me often to The Game, an equally mindless thriller he starred in. Famke Janssen is just as gorgeous as ever, but even that could not help me. I do not mind that I went to see it, but knowing what I know now, I would not go. If you can turn off your brain while watching it, you should.
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
A great idea
The concept is great; the performances are outstanding yet the whole is not satisfactory. The potential in the idea and the talent of the actors were not exploited to their fullest. Malkovich is good as usual, but Willem Dafoe is amazing. Despite all its shortcomings it is still definitely a must-see.
American History X (1998)
You wish it was history
American History X was more or less what I expected. Well done with some holes. I did expect a certain level of didactics, which is very difficult to avoid when dealing with a complex and sensitive issue.
The film is not one-sided, but it is unbalanced. We hear some very powerful arguments from the fascists, and get a very strong emotional message from the other side but neither is reciprocated. We do not really see the hatred in the fascists and hear no argument against them from normal' society. What we end up with is a messed up message that says these guys may be right but hate is bad because it does not make us feel good.
I am of course simplifying, but being a cerebral person, I expect a cerebral argument. There are very good arguments against the white supremacists that can go way beyond the let's love each other because the other options are ugly' argument that was presented here. The grievances' voiced are never challenged. Are we supposed to reject the arguments just because reprehensible people represent them? Do not be too taken by my grumbling here, this is a very good movie, truly a must see for everybody. It just had the potential to be a lot more than what it is. It did not give me the chill I got watching Menace to Society' (http://us.imdb.com/Details?0107554)
Along Came a Spider (2001)
Holes and nothing but holes
`Along came the spider' is infuriatingly bad. Not that it had holes, but it had nothing but holes. Stupid clichés thrown together in an incredible mess. You know types: the let's watch the video that we saw a hundred times again so that we can discover something that should have been plainly obvious the first time. This movie was never able to figure out what it wants to be: A psychological thriller, a political thriller or a clever double and triple crossing suspense movie. The wise producers must have thought that throwing three movies in one will make three times the money. Their wisdom probably did not reach the height to realize that such attempts never work.
The film can keep your attention, cinematography is good and Morgan Freeman is an excellent actor who can project integrity even if the world and the story around him have none. Her co-star on the other hand fits with the story perfectly. Equally dumb and pretty. I doubt that we will see too much of her in the future but maybe for the same reason we will.
If you do not mind lack of logic watch it. I did not walk away from it, but maybe I should have.
En sång för Martin (2001)
Alzheimer's conquers all
While `A song for Martin' is a powerful movie, it is also a sort of impotent one. One of the hobbyhorses of my high school literature teacher was to make us understand the difference between what is tragic and dramatic. A car accident is tragic. A car going over a cliff driven by someone fulfilling his inescapable destiny is drama. Alzheimer's is a tragic disease, but it is not drama. Unavoidable is not a substitute for inescapable. You cannot have drama without participation while participation is the last thing you can expect from someone suffering from the disease. This is a very well made movie. Acting is superb; cinematography is fine. I learned from it everything I would ever care to know about Alzheimer's, but I still left the theatre with an empty feeling. The story is sad, the loss is painful and love conquers everything but I had no revelations. I received information, from which I only gained knowledge, not real gut wrenching understanding. I never cared much about acted documentaries and this film never really rose above that.
`A song for Martin' has a very promising start. Passionate love at the age of 50/60 is full of dramatic potential. For a while I thought that is what the movie will be about, but I was wrong. There are hints of dramatic conflict but they are never explored and from the moment Martin is diagnosed, the story turns purely didactic. Dealing with such a situation also has dramatic potentials but this movie choose to concentrate on the evolution of the illness. Is that bad? I don't know, but gaining this sort of knowledge is not what I expect from art.
Should you see this movie? I think so. You will learn a lot about the illness most of us fear the most. Just do not expect more. See it for what it is: an animated illustration of the disease. For that, it is perfect.
Night on Earth (1991)
The best of Jarmusch
This film is one of my all-time favorites. Night on earth is about power and the silliness of our assumptions about social status, being in control, sexual mores, power and moral strength. We are still not too far from the animal world, but instead of brute force, we use social conventions to establish a pecking order in every situation. We move into any social environment with some expectations about our place in it relative to the status of others. Night on earth is a little study of these expectations. Every one of the episodes has a beautiful triangle of power, morals and expectations.
The cabbie - the casting agent - her boss/client in LA
The cabbie - Yoyo - his sister-in-law in New York
The cabbie - the priest - the transvestites in Rome
The cabbie - the diplomats - the blind girl in Paris
The cabbie - the drunk - his friends in Helsinki
The casting agent of the LA story is socially superior to the dirty little cabbie girl (played delightfully by Winona Rider;) but we soon learn that she is not on top; she is a slave of the demands of her job, the whims of her boss/client. When she tries to assert her status by condescending to the cabbie girl the whole structure of assumptions falls apart. Status is meaningless if you do not want it. In the end the true strength award goes to the Corky. We see the same idea evolving in the other episodes as well.
Every story starts with an assumption, an assumption of social order that first gets twisted then turned completely upside down. This twist and turn is played out with flawless consistency in each episode.
Whichever character appears to be the weakest in the setup of our social assumptions turns out to be the strongest by the end of the ride.
I will not bore you analyzing them all and you do not need to see it for its 'deeper meaning.' This is one those wonderful movies that can entertain at any level. I've never seen Roberto Benigni this funny or Rosie Perez this cute and sexy. Without question this is my favorite Jarmusch movie, and I am sure your will like it too. Do not miss it!
The 13th Warrior (1999)
A minimalist masterpiece
There are two distinct trends in Hollywood movies: self-referencing and reductionism. This film is the most perfect example of the second.
In a never-ending quest for digestibility movies are getting simpler. Character development? Forget it! Drama? Never mind that! Meaningful dialogues? What for? Characters are replaced by posing stars, drama by actions, dialogues by easy to remember catchy one-liners.
I don't think I ever saw anything that was so nothing. No drama, no characters, not even a story. A simply bad movie would have clichés, wholes in the story line and bad acting. But then even clichés have some coherence, holes in the story line imply that there is one and bad acting is still acting. The only thing this movie has is images. Beautiful country, tough men, bloody battles. I had the impression that this movie is a collection of still images. Images where people are posing as they were for the painters of romanticism. The heroic pose, the loving pose, the cunning pose. Nothing in this movie made any sense unless I was willing to look at them as clichés reduced to an absolute minimum where they are still recognizable. Images designed only to evoke from your memory the complex emotions they refer to. Could it be that the film was in pre-release limbo for two years because the producers didn't know how far could they go insulting the viewer's intelligence? Could it be that Mctiernan made this movie into a parody of itself and its genre? Could it be that it was intentional? I would like to think so. Then I could think that it is only trash, not garbage.
In Advance of the Landing (1993)
A great documentary
While I am not a particular fan of the genre, I must say that this is a great documentary. No comments, no judgments, just the images of the people, the things they say, the devices they create the ceremonies they perform. They are so pitiful in their sorry existence that watching them made me nauseated. A movie that can do that deserves praise.
The interviews are perfect in length, have a nice rhythm with a healthy dose of fifties SF movie imagery mixed in with them.