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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Old times, cruel times.
It looks like Coen brothers capture most of the wild west in six stories. I am sure there will be a lot of interpretations by reviewers on what means what in the movie. Here is the simple reflection in my mind: Six stories are capturing the entire spectrum of western life of the time. It's both realistic and epic at the same time. We can't count on what will happen to an average person in west. The most likely things are that they will suffer and die, cause it's damn difficult. And of course there are different epic condensations of characters, every character representing an entire class of people. Take the gunslinger, or bank robber, or the old tough cowboy fighting to the Indians, or the French bourgeois, or the maiden. Most of them will be hurt and suffer, because that's what people encountered in wild west.
And all of these punctuated with superb shot by Coen brothers. A work of an art undoubtedly.
The Irishman (2019)
With a gun you charge, with a knife you run!
Watch this movie on a big screen and watch it attentively, because it's building up into something you gonna like.
By the way, De Niro and Pesci are doing stunning job for the entire time. They are genuine and they feel the whole thing. But it's Pacino that outshines, because he is the real Hoffa.
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
Exuberance
This movie is somewhat different from the rest of Tarantino movies because of lower tension over the story (excluding the last 20 minutes). But it is so full of fulfilling scenes and wonderful performances that the end of the movie does not seem to be relevant. Di Caprio's performance is captivating, because he is not a character who is exactly a likable hero, but it he kind of becomes from the second half of the movie. Bred Pitt has a timeless, story-less character, and there is just enough of him in the movie. And eventually, the most fun part is that as usual Tarantino gives a satisfying ending. He loves it. It's kind of fair. It's like ice-cream and coffee after the dinner - kind of satisfying evening.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
A nutrient in the art department
Once I heard Clint Eastwood saying making a good movie is really about finding a good story. A captivating genuine story often can empower performances and directing within its realm and deliver a single piece of art to its audience.
Bone Tomahawk is more than that. It's so powerful in its realism, so meticulous in every second of performances, so discreet in its promise, and so thorough in its delivery that it feels fulfilled in the gut after watching. It's a nutrient in the art department.
I noticed some reviewers tried to classify it as western, horror, or drama. Some noticed some racial nuances. Let me state this, though, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because the story teller and the director didn't think about it, and it's a good thing too. A genuine story shouldn't regard restrictions of any kind. Classifications can be left to the critics.
Performances are striking. I carefully watched every single move and every single sentence of K. Russell as a sheriff, and he makes solid sense in every second. He is not only so convincing, but also so attractive character that rivets the viewer. Emotions passing his face deep and transparent at the same time.
Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and Richard Jenkins inhabit three fundamentally different characters that come together in a single journey. Merely curious interactions of their worldviews keep the audience very busy before they'll get to their destiny.
The dialog are powerful, somewhat formal but never ungenuine. One feels precisely that the formality comes from the main characters themselves. Paying attention to other characters reveals that formality of the dialog is not a signature of the movie: it just happened that the main characters were so.
The furnishing of the houses and the little admirable sketches of the family lives of the characters create a unique vantage, making the viewer feeling in the same room with the characters. And all of these, punctuate with horrid scenes, that comes natural to the characters' environment, creates a solid masterpiece of modern cinema.
I predict this movie not to be hype, or cult, or otherwise recognized widely, the reason being no clear bad characters, but rather accidentally bad situations. These might make some simplistic viewers unreachable to the movie. But it will be recognized by the few sophisticated viewers as an accomplished art with its solid place in the world cinema.
Brimstone (2016)
I became a feminist for 2 and a half an hour
The other reviewers described the movie precisely: Dark, ruthless, without any love anywhere.
I felt writing this review for another relevant point: Females suffered those times. They suffered a lot. In this movie you will feel the culmination of all derogatory and disparaging treats to women. This feeling emerges as a side effect of all the scenes. It is the by-product of the religion, ignorance, and power exercise. Another brilliant piece of art urging reformation of the societal morals.
I just wished that the retribution scene in the end wasn't so unrealistic. I do not understand why the director had to make it complicated near the end. That's the only reason I rated 7 and not 9 points. But in any case the movie provides substance to refresh our memory about the dark parts of our past. Watch and ponder!
Nocturnal Animals (2016)
One and a half an hour brilliance + half an hour mediocre ending.
This movie manages to deliver a brilliant start and intense plot development. The actors are taking their time to give brilliant performances. Actually I liked the police officer (Michael Shannon) performance the best. He gives a stunning performance as a taciturn western police. His features, reactions, and casualness mixed with the conscientiousness in the job is brilliantly natural.
Some reviewers questioned the blurry connection between the book and the protagonists' lives - I say it wouldn't be necessity. That's how a writer is, he writes whatever he feels, and sometimes the story can develop far from his(her) own life.
Some reviewers said the movie tries hard to deliver a strong message in the end - a culmination point. Perhaps they have a point. But I say the movie becomes average and boring in the end. Therefore, the hard-tried emotional culmination looks a failure.
I wish the ending was a proper justice with hard-triggered squeezes. Especially the police character was ruined - just because he had a cancer, his personality should not become compromised.
I enjoyed the movie, nevertheless.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
If you are watching this movie you're sitting in that cell
Zahler is a new style in film industry. This is the second movie of him in the same style. Here is what counts: 1. Excellently thought out plot 2. Short powerful dialogues 3. Meticulous examination of characters, and therefore stunning performances 4. Aestheticization of violence (radically differently from that of Tarantino's)
These points are unique and uncompromisable in the movie. One can easily imagine that flaw in the performances has not been negotiable in the eyes of Zahler. Vince Vaughn gives a solid performance - a strong emotional character, who only expresses his emotions when he is alone, otherwise he keeps straightforward and mixes little jokes in his treat for easing his own inner feelings. Jennifer Carpenter goes as realistic as it gets. The rest of the characters are well-developed too. The only negative criticism I have is that two-three little episodes in the fight scenes were unrealistic. E. g. when he fights with the Chinese guy while others are watching. The fights themselves had very little dry elements, reminding Van-Damme style. The most of the fights were well prepared too, especially breaking parts.
If you like strong character movies just go and watch it. And I don't bother to warn you for the violence, you will get over it anyways, cause it's a good movie.
Interstellar (2014)
Nice poetry, vapid science.
One thing I learned from great movies is that they have their quality aspects proportional to each other. You imagine what you get if you have great acting and poor directing, or great directing and poor story, or great story and poor focus.
What do we have in this movie? Great acting, great directing, great poetry, and absurd scientific claims, which kills the joy of watching the movie if you are a little aware of the principles of modern physics.
If you are an artist or musician, or anyone who has no knowledge about quantum mechanics, relativity, and modern cosmology, you can go and watch this movie and enjoy its great poetry. If you, however, have some knowledge I warn you that you may feel distrust and disappointment to the whole story and start blaming all the actors and the director for making such serious efforts while the story is scientifically absurd.
I mean if the director (and the rest) intend to create a sci-fi movie they must avoid too detailed and serious explanations of how things happens in the universe (with serious faces). This reflects their ignorance and spoils the poetry of the movie.
I can bring few facts from the movie that is nonsense and they needed to avoid it.
1. A warm hole is a theoretical concept, and in practice no one even remotely knows what it is yet. 2. You may travel through a warm hole, but you cant direct yourself to a particular planet. 3. A black hole has several orders of magnitude more gravity and warmth than the sun, anything falling into it burns down and becomes about the size of an atom. The protagonist would be dead long before reaching its center. 4. And all this nonsense of looking to our particular earth from the black hole just because it has different dimensionality ... I don't even want to talk about it. 5. After 30 years their children needed to think about other life related things as well, and not sitting and talking about their father's mission all the time (be a bit realistic about life). 6. The biggest nonsense - after years father and daughter are meeting and just smiling and crying. This is not an American drama folks, the man has been in another galaxy and see the most unnatural thing in life: his daughter is 80 years old. They both should have been perplexed, got panic attack, feel extreme feelings, collapse or something. What the hell was that? A meeting with tears and smile?
To sum up: The immensity of the universe and its effect on human aspect is is poorly explored. There should have been abnormal feelings going on in the move due to this, but we saw none!
Yerankyuni (1967)
A little word in the big world
This is a good movie folks. A group of blacksmiths working together in a triangular forge. Each of them has completely different personality and different attitude to life. But they are friends and have been working long together. Their story is told from their youngest member's perspective - Little Hovik, who is a school boy.
What fascinated me is that in parallel with their little local story we can feel the story of the big world in the background. The background story sometimes feels remote but some other times feels menacing the viewer.
I found that the movie is excellent in prompting opposite feelings in parallel. On one hand it's the feeling of comfort and humor that is related to this group of people and their daily life. But on the other hand we can see that they are actually vulnerable and impacted by the things happening in the big world (e. g. second world war or the appearance of first airplanes). Therefore, despite the subtle humor that we enjoy throughout the whole movie, it feels deeply sad sometimes.
The actors are giving stunning performances, and the direction is equally great. I highly recommend this movie.
Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
A counterargument to the haters
Folks this is one of the most extraordinary stories that is ever found and told. The story is so electrifying that some reviewers has even tried to question its existence and accuracy by trying to find arguments. I do not know what were the motives behind attempting to disprove this story, but the arguments were vague and impoverished. I will not reflect on the analysis of the story and its beauty, but just try to remind the haters that when bringing argumentation for disapproval please be rigorous in your inferences. There are a few facts that are very important and form the pivot of the story. If you bring arguments against minor facts in the story then it is of little value. Major facts that are testable are:
1. The Songs of Rodriguez are of highest quality and are of the same caliber as the greatest singers that we know. I have this opinion as a critique, and many known critiques have the same opinion. It is a different thing that some don't have the same preference and may like different songs. But I am not talking about liking but the QUALITY.
2. Rodriguez songs are very grounded, rough, and tough. Things that are not close to the hearts of American people - they prefer more heroism, romanisizm, etc. This may explain why he did not get popular in America. This is OK, but does not mean Rodriguez songs are of lower quality and we are just pumping up the story. Perhaps his Mexican background and non compromising personality could play role in not getting popular in the US. He was not "playing with rules".
3. He was very popular in South Africa, and he did collect thousands of people who waited for him. And apparently he had no clue about it! Isn't this clear? It is. Just look at the facts of the history.
This is it. There could be inaccuracies in directing, story telling, etc. But please have the dignity not to put 1 star and reason that the story was fake. If you want to be seen or heard of get some other business. Thank you.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
This is a good movie
All right folks, I need to tell that this was a mixture movie. Those who go to watch this movie for only entertainment might encounter a few cruel scenes or scenes touching the reality of the time. They may be upset. Those who go to watch a real story and do not expect protagonists escaping dangers miraculously might find a few miraculous escapes. They may be upset.
My recommendation is to be very open when going to watch this movie. And if you are you most likely will see many folkloric events proceeding one another.
The plot is predictable and the flow is somewhat long, but the real fun is in between. Good acting, good effects, positive atmosphere with a touch of reality here and there. These will make you continuously exchange between smile and thoughtfulness.
John Wick (2014)
Excellent action, average acting, bad story
I have ambivalent feelings after watching this movie. This is a stylish action film, where the actions are so cool and believable, and sometimes even too realistic. However, the acting of the supporting roles' actors is simplistic, we have seen thousands of such acting instances in average Hollywood movies. The story is bad. I understand the the movie is meant to be an action movie for having fun time, but sometimes the story is so bad that I felt uncomfortable on my coach.
One interesting fact. There seems to be a cinematographic novelty in this film with regard to fights: The full scale mixture of martial arts and gun fight. This was what I was long waiting for, because in reality this is what will happen if we have a well-trained hit man. Good job!
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Such a crock of nonsense!
I can't believe so much money is spent on this movie and literally no one cared to make a plot. Come on folks, where the hell is the plot. Scenes have nothing to do with each other, no logic, no sequence, nothing. Yet, we have more than two hours of things going on. This was a rare case when I was watching the movie and constantly feeling uncomfortable or ashamed on my own coach instead of the movie makers, or the actors.
When it comes to acting, the main character does a good job, or may I say, he would do a good job if there was a plot.
And all of these is not enough, heroism is so important in this movie and it is made so big on top of no substance, that I do not like the word "heroism" anymore. All in all the money wasted on this movie could well serve for homeless people or for curing drug addicts or such. So much would be changed in the world. But now... Nothing just a smoke of two hours.
Solace (2015)
1:41 minutes great time
I watched the movie without checking any reviews or ratings, and without any expectations. In the very beginning I got the impression that here we have another thriller, with a very special serial murder case, where the case is too complicated for the protagonists, so they need the archetypal smarter retired fellow for solving the case. It turned out the movie is not about that at all, but much more interesting. The movie triggers confronting feelings of morals and reasoning. The scenes are beautiful and riveting. The actors are doing good job. The story is not the most realistic as compared with "Unforegiven" or "Goodfellas" but there is a good substance for focus and consideration. So, in short, enjoy 1:41 minutes of time!
Rango (2011)
An OK movie with a somewhat stretched plot.
There was a good cinematography, but the plot was predictable and stretched. Some actions in the middle were unconnected to the story. Originality was good here and there but the overall story was not original. Overall not impressive, except the costumes and the landscape. The start was interesting, which made me interested, so I followed the plot. But at some point, when Rango become Sheriff, things started to be uninteresting. From that point to the point of meeting the snake and leaving the town was very general plot with no real interesting events. Then meeting the Man with No Name was interesting again. The face off with the snake in the end promised to be a good concluding act. But again, it was stretched into something else, and I lost the interest again. The message of the overall movie was not bad, but as I said, twice in the middle I got destructed with mediocre plot. I understand some people will love this, but I also warn that people who are looking for an original plot and an original message will not get much. Good luck with watching!
Appaloosa (2008)
An OK movie. The development of antagonist character was weak!
I usually read but not write reviews. Now... I needed to write. The main reason is that I did not see anyone of the reviewers have noticed how badly the character of antagonist is developed. First he is introduced to be a cruel, cold-blooded gang leader, who does not blink his eyes when killing police officers. And suddenly towards the and he becomes a coward trying to escape justice. I mean how? How exactly this could be possible in the wild west?
Otherwise it is an OK movie, worth watching, though towards the end it becomes a boring mixture of revenge and love, not quite understandable.
By the way, it is worth to watch the movie just to see Viggo Mortensen's stunning act!