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camcullensmith
Reviews
Crimes of the Future (2022)
Artsy body horror that lacked meat
Spoiler free review:
The film starts of really strong and sets out an intriguing premise where at some point in the future we humans evolved to not feel pain or get infections.
Cronenburg plays on this in classic body horror ways, where surgery can be performed by anyone with basic skills without much risk. So live operations and strange organic body modification has become a performance art.
Obviously art and what it means to be human are central themes, but they were under explored. And it wasn't overly clear on anyone's real motivations.
For an artsy body horror it needed a bit more meat. But still definitely worth a watch if you like the genre. Some really stand out visuals, a handful of great scenes and a few pretty funny satirical comedy beats.
Verdens verste menneske (2021)
The perfect romcom
Hilarious, dark, brutal, self relfective relatable movie. Shows well developed characters, everyone has flaws to contrast their virtues. Couldn't have been pulled off without the fantastic cast and nuanced directing.
Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015)
Strong start but wobbles with trying to tie it all up
NON SPOILER PART:
The movie as a whole tends to shy away from its own message. So whilst they do chuck a lot at the wall with storylines it all felt a bit lacking of cause and effect.
Act one and two feel like they are building up to something big. The mother character has some pretty bonkers expositon about the marriage issues which is fun, and there are tid bits of interesting character developments throughout. Probably could have done with a bit more on the whole Ricky situation. The conflict between the Christian and athiest teens was also fun and fairly well acted.
SPOILER PART:
My biggest problem was with the end, all the while we are seemingly building up to something. I'm still not sure whether the outing scene actually happened, or whether Bob was just talking about Logan? It cuts straight to Logan after the drunken outing and then nothing is mentioned again until the mother is having a pretty unprompted separation convo with the father.
Also, yes there is the argument of the "poeticness" of it all. However, It cuts to black before the final and only gay kiss. That was infuriating, probably would have given a 7 if they showed it at least. What a massive F You to the questioning/gay kids watching who will be desperate to see the actual romantic act in what is actually pretty bare bones when it comes to celebrating acceptance.
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars: Pink Table Talk (2021)
Bizarre and rude
This whole episode seemed so bonkers. The challenge was fourth wall breaking in the weirdest way and the judging was basically just criticism of the individuals personality traits. How do you even begin to offer effective, constructive critique for this challenge. Im asking because Ross certianly doesnt know.
The queens had to do prepare and deliver a round table discussion on one of three topics. Those topics being sex (oh spicy and fun), body (oh great for drag queens #proportionising) and motherhood (?). Why motherhood?
Seeing queens prepare their own storylines in groups and then act surprised when they come up at the round table was incredibly jarring. It was manufactured emotional moments, which is standard for reality TV, but you aren't supposed to show us the manufacturing process, nor is it supposed to be cramed into a challenge. Also, its not a reality show, its a reality competition show. Furthermore, The fact it wasn't delivered basically to camera and not to an audience gave the challenge an even more manufactured feel.
To critique the queens for not being able to deliver this plastic vaneer of sincerity, rude.
To take some real deep hits about the queens character traits and how they are as a genuine person, rude.
To pretty much tear down one queen who seems to be sincere, trying to frame it as another Laganja S6 "fake" personality, rude.
To put the one queen who actually had a heartfelt moment with another, and gave brilliant advice, rude.
The whole episode felt so uncanny valley, like it was a deep cut parody of itself.
Lip sync was decent though so theres a star for that henny. Might be time to replace Ross perminantly with one of the UK Judges or just keep Carson the whole time.
What Happened to Monday (2017)
Expect action over philosophy and you'll have a good time
Great plot taken from a short story published on Tumblr. Noomie Rapace gets a whole lot of role to play with given the seven different parts, and did a stellar job with it. Pleased that this was also backed up by the acting vetrans Glenn Close and Willam Defoe, without brilliant acting it would be easier to get pulled out of the somewhat unrealistic general senario. However it kept me enthralled until the end.
Action seens were strong and suspensful. Score kept it going and the editing didnt leave any moment to stop too much. Sure, if you want to sit there and pick it apart then its not difficult to find plot holes, but its a hell of a lot tighter than some other two hour movies ive seen. Typically theres at least 5-10 minutes that could be cut but in this they do really make the most of the run time.
Also, a 20 mill budget went a hell of a long way! No its not The Matrix, nor is going to go down as an absolute great, but it knew what it was and decided not to go too deep. If the director wanted to they could have delved into deeper waters to really dig into the 'identity' and 'sense of self' themes but in many ways im glad they didnt. It kept it moving and i had a lot of fun watching. Act one got the exposition out of the way effectively and you do need to suspend some disbelief, but im glad it didnt bolt on another 20 minutes trying to explain every detail of the dystopia. Instead it prioritised the main plot and some top notch suspense and action scenes. Albeit at the sacrafice of some character development across the board, but with seven main characters and in a world of overpopulation, not getting into the meat of every character is okay by me.
A few easily spotted plot errors, and it wouldnt take a genius to guess that "evil agency is evil" minor twist, but it didnt detract from the overall enjoyment of the film.
Knew what it wanted to be and executed it well.
Color Out of Space (2019)
Tried hard but mixed bag
Geniune passion for the source material and genre went into this. However a few weird choices had the experience thrown off.
Clunky exposition in the first 30 minutes made it feel like this was the first time the family members have met. No real relationship building, and honestly we arent guided to really care too much.
Couple of super cheap jump scares instead of building up geniune suspense. I would have hoped for a more organic sense of dread over a super loud car alarm going off. A sequence follows; "oh wheres the missing cat", cuts to the father driving, then crazy loud screech and close up off the malformed cat in the middle of the road.
Easy to pick up that time distortion is an element of the 'color'. However i did find some of the choices to demonstrate time were confused. E.g. Dad goes to get a bottle of wine from the Cellar at the start of dinner, then comes back up and tells the daughter to get a start on the dishes. That scene was before the meteor so just felt like the script needed tidying up.
Same for another scene, mother was in the middle of preparing dinner but cuts herself so father drives her to hospital but then the son is told its time for bed whilst they were waving off their parents. No dinner for that kid i guess!
Sound mixing was a bit of a mess, especially at the start. I found myself fiddling with the volume a few times throughout the movie.
Also, Nick Cage was really ticking a lot of boxes for me at the start but for the last 30 minutes of the movie he is just Nick Cage. This really bugged me, and even with the heavy situation going on his acting pulled me away from that.
Everyone else was on the 'pretty decent' to 'strong' range of acting.
Dispite this i would still say watch it if you are into Lovecraft or just this genre in general. I adore cosmic horror and it is an incredibly difficult topic to express on film, so really big props on visuals but for the most part lacked the dread style atmosphere. Went in hoping for 'The Witch' or 'Hereditary' level depth but ended up with more popcorn shock horror.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Good acting but ended up being shallow
Conversations that slip around poetry, philosophy, metaphysics and time; but none of it actually goes anywhere or uses the movie to demonstrate interesting ideas.
Fun experiments with the storytelling but all over the place. It's weird from the offset, and stays at that level of weird, but without validation. I've seen people compare it to the Twilight Zone, but it's far more hollow.
Spoiler bit; on the drive back from the parents house, about half way through this overly long film, there is real obvious dialog about how it's clearly about Jake and not the woman. However, the whole film tries to discuss feminism is a nuanced way, then thinks it has a 'gotcha' moment when it flips to become his story. This felt a little obvious and left a bad taste when they dedicated at least 10 minutes to the idea that women shouldn't be used as props for men. Then just used her as a prop for him.
Confusing, but not because it was a complicated and nuanced, but because so many bizarre choices were made with little value.
The Stranger (2020)
Failed overly bombastic attempt at a BBC drama
Three episodes in and just got way to angry at the bad writing and awful acting from everyone apart from the core three.
There is a bizarre teen drug use sub plot that doesn't understand what made 'Skins' good. Way too many other plots which seem meaningless (I'm sure they come together in some way but I'm not sticking around to watch this train wreck). No character makes human decisions, the kids seem overly relaxed seeming that their mother hasn't been seen for days, no sense of pace or time passing. It's impossible to tell the time this is supposed to span.
Jennifer Saunders is a wonderful woman but every line is delivered with a comic twist even when she is held at gun point. Really the whole thing is a black comedy without enough focus on the comedy or drama to make it thrilling.
Last thing, all of the scenes that are supposed to be tense are thrown completely off with an overdone harsh, almost dubstep like, soundtrack which is about as subtle as Dame Edna on her campest days. Really distracts and emphasises that if it were without the soundtrack it wouldnt be tense at all.