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ralphtherodent
Reviews
The Darkest Hour (2011)
brilliant counter-point
i dun write many comments on nuttin ... however, gotta do this one
absolutely stunning ... so non-Hollywood/euro but up-to-date with the oh-so-seen/felt-it-before Hollywood clichés
so what?
dunno, what can u can get from it?
the slightly twisted Russian WWII/tolstoy/near-china background emotional content
the remarkably successful invisible (low special effects budget) approach to the thing (ignore, sez me, the bit toward the end of the flick when u can actually see human-type faces on the alien energy plasms)
a few novel (to me) camera effects
the odd momentary twists where it just does not follow Hollywood emotional plotting, tho acts like it's trying hard to do so
if i had a movie class at a good university level, i would maybe assign my rap above with a "see the movie" command, and 500 essay-type words regarding my take on the movie, and of course the movie itself ... easy extra essay/grade points given for cool dialectic
...
deep Shakespeare? ... duh ... not even Hamlet could do that these days given the retro hype regarding that good old Willy ... if he were alive these days, he would be making stuff like this, but prolly with some deeper internal correlation of some of the overt levels ... i guess
bodes well for functional counterpoint to the Hollywood spam, tho brilliant it may be here and there
Push (2009)
bloody excellent
hard for me to talk about this flick ... i have a hard disk copy i rewatch periodically (in parts) ... however, the final (pseudo-)glorious fight scene kind of disses (to dis or not to dis) the whole thing ... the scene is technically fine, but seems to me to miss the point
the cool of the flick is the psychodymanics of the main characters
part of the weird (cool) that filters through the Hollywood smarf is the hong kong background ... the whole thing was filmed over there, and some of the cultural strange filters though
another part of the weird is the psychic whatever, that hits the viewer in terms of however he/she perceives such whatever
for whatever (third time used) reasons, i love this flick
psycho-action awesome, until the dumb-ass final fight ... note the poster for the flick as shown on IMDb ... not not NOT the feel of the flick, IMHO
dunno ... but highly and seriously recommend it to the right audience
...
however, gotta gripe about the early restroom fight scene ... the chick beats the dude to the floor with a hollow plastic thingie that has no impact potential at all ... gripe, grouse, whatever (4th)
cya
The Black Knight Returns (2009)
damn, what a brilliant dog's breakfast
review scale inadequate for what i want ... 5 out of ten is averaging a 10-and-1 score
i actually enjoyed this beast and hope they do a sequel that maintains the awesome cool ... the incredible Chinese-opera fight scenes, the absolute tongue-in-cheek totality of the thing together with the curious sincerity of the soap opera ... dunno ... if this kind of thing is your bag, u want to see this
that's it in a quick-food-to-go pack
but to be posted i need 10 lines of text, the host site advises
so let me say further that they need to vamp the mad dichotomy vastly further, like the best of the cartoon world(s) or Vonnegut or Kafka or anyone when they're hot ... this baby got mid-warm on the average, but nevertheless with my very high overall praise
special hat-tip to the human vocal quality
also to the US$20,000 budget ... shot in the contemporary LA area ... good job, that
repeat ... i seriously enjoyed this flick