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jinmo2010
Reviews
I girasoli (1970)
Script written on a totally absurd premises
It's possible the Mastroianni character survived with help of some kind hearted babushka for a few days, or even weeks. However, he would have lasted for long, not to mention get integrated into the Russian society and hold a job and start a family. Almost certainly he would have been found within a matter of days if not weeks and hauled off to a POW camp. He would have been lucky if he was not shot outright when found.
As for the Lauren character, can you imagine the Soviet authority allowing a foreign woman bird-dogging after her missing husband all over Russia? Searching for a foreigner who was a soldier in an invading army, no less? The Soviets required even their own citizens to carry 'internal passports' and obtain travel petmits even to go to the next village!!
This is one movie that demands too much of suspension of disbelief.
The English Patient (1996)
Good attempt at a period movie, but too many anachronisms
Some reviewers labeled this movie as a WWII 'war movie,' but it has too many anachronisms to be qualified as such. For example: the archaeological expedition folds when the war looms (i.e. sometime before September 1, 1939). The death (and fatal injury) of the Cliftons in the air crash closely follows therafter. Almacy's own air crash, caused by German flak, follows not long after. However, Rommel's Africa Corps did not arrive in North Africa until early 1941: that means there were no Germans there at the time Almacy's plane was supposedly shot down by them.
Arbitrage (2012)
This guy is a TOTAL moral bankrupt
He swindles his clients, cheats on his wife, and endangers his daughter. Uses son of one of his former clients (who is beholden to him) to get himself out of the shithole, in the process exposing him to a jail time. This guy is a total, all-weather moral bankrupt. He is also extremely foul mouthed, using the f word every time he utters a word. What a garbage....
Childhood's End (2015)
Plot holes that would put Swiss cheese to shame
A good effort, but there are so many faulty premises.
First of all, if the overlords were intent on eventually destroying mankind why did they waste time "making the world perfect" for them?. Second, why was the Earth itself destroyed-- There was nothing to blame the Earth itself for mankind's failure, right? Why didn't they simply kill off the older (in their view contaminated) generation? What they did is like arresting the DWI driver and impounding and scrapping the Lamborghini he was driving.
Suite Française (2014)
Another one of those WWII movies in which the Good German has to be a servile character
I am not a German. But I am really sick and tired of this kind of movie. The German officer has absolutely no sense of pride. How come he could help a Frenchman that killed one of his fellow officers to get away, even if the driver of the get-away car happens to be woman who had had some romantic association with him? Does a German soldier who places his personal feelings ahead of his duty to his country and fellowship with his comrades qualify as a 'good German'? Come on, this character Benoir killed no less than three German soldiers. Consider this: Would the French themselves condon a Frenchman doing the same thing in a reverse circumstance? No way! They would have shot him if they found out.
Straw Dogs (1971)
A Social Comment on the 70's Values and Mores of British Lower-Middle Class
I saw this movie when I was in my teens and decided to watch it again after I heard there has been a remake (which I have chosen not to see--I have always been suspicious of remakes. Ha ha).
This movie is basically a social comment on the lower-middle class of Britain (or shall I say of England, since the movie is set in Cornwall, England), how vulgar, primitive, and uncouth the values and mores of average lower middle class there had been in the late 1960' and early 70's, under the veneer of apparent civility. The townspeople including the reverend, taunt the protagonist (played by Hoffman)who is an American, with remarks on the racial tension or the nuclear bombs of the U.S. (insinuating 'moral hazard' and the threat the U.S. posed to the humankind, with the implication that they the British people were morally superior relative to the Americans.) Well, actually the Britishers turn out to be not so morally superior as the plot develops--they murder, rape, steal, cheat and harass people from outside. (The movie had been banned in Britain until 2002. I suspect the supposedly 'controversial' rape scene was not the real agenda for the ban.)
Britain has been and is basically a class society, probably even more so than the pre-1917 revolution Russsia. The lower class live vulgar and the 'upper class' live pretending to be not so vulgar--however they are all the same--as Sam Peckinpah portrays the 'reverend.'
The English are dangerous people to trust--They are treacherous, under veneer of civility. If you are stranded in a lifeboat with them. They will kill and eat you. Do not trust them just because they sing opera aria.
JFK (1991)
Vietnam? Wrong answer for the wrong reason!
It is true CIA was one of the participants. However, Vietnam was NOT the reason that Kennedy was killed. Oliver Stone got the cause and effect reversed--Escalation of Vietnam War was not THE cause of the Kennedy assassination, but one of (albeit THE major) effects of it. CIA (and in broader sense Mafia, which wouldn't have been able to act without CIA's sanction and coordination anyway)did not kill Kennedy for the reason Kennedy would take the money away from the Eisenhower 'military-industrial complex' but for the reason he had not only screwed CIA during the Bay of Pigs but also shifted his blame and planned to break it up into thousand pieces. In that sense Kennedy was a consummate son of a bitch, ingrate and dastardly.
At the time of his assassination Vietnam was only one of many 'Communist-threatened' areas of interest for the U.S. administration--it only became THE issue only after Johnson (who had had the knowledge of the plot all along and gave the final sanction at the Murchison meeting )became the president and put into action the escalation in Vietnam as a reward to the Texas Oil, ultra-right, 'military', and 'industrial' complex that helped him to power. Kennedy had sown the seed of Vietnam as compensation for his failure in Cuba--ultimately the fat cats reaped the harvest a the cost of millions of people dead and tens of billions of dollars in taxpayers' money in their pocket. In that sense it was poetic justice that he died the way he did.
Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (2013)
Good effort at balanced view, but full of inaccuracies
For example, why are the Einsatzkommando auxiliaries wearing Ukrainian armband in Smolensk (which is within the Russia proper)???? How does the political SS officer (that is not even Waffen SS) get to have command of a Wehrmacht soldier (Friedhelm)? Anyone who has a modicum of interest in the subject would know what I am talking about. Germany was full of bad people, but at the same time full of more of good people. They happened to have a devil as their saviour--only that they made a pact with that devil, even though the did not know it at the time. Every society has its own criminal elements, and it is the society's vigilance not to let them to have control over them--and that is where the German society failed in the intervening years. Of course they are to blame for it as such--the American Jews who brought about the 1929 Depression (Wall Street, U.S.A.) were the ones to be blamed. well, it's a subject of another story anyway.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
"Greaseball" Complex for Directror González is Too Apparent
Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director, who happens to be a Mexican, shows too much of his racial complex in the opening scenes of the movie.
I mean, one of the female characters in the opening scenes exclaims "it smells like Kimchee" on how some flower smells..... of all places at a flower shop owned/operated by a Korean (Everybody these days knows Kinchee is the name for the Korean-style national dish cabbage pickle)! So Gonzalez's 'Mexican Greaseball' complex ends up compensated in such a dastardly way...'deflection of his own racial complex to some other ethnicity".....eh? It's simply unbelievable.
I am telling you, grease is much more unhealthy for your health than pickled cabbage.
Fury (2014)
Typical Gung Ho Americans-always-win movie
This movie is in the tradition of those 1960's WWII movies in which Americans are phenomenal good shots and Germans are bad shots who cannot even aim straight. In this movie too one Ameriacan can handle ten Germans single-handedly. One thing I liked about this movie was that it does not have any Jewish agenda--Too many (and in fact practically all of) the WWII movies that come out these days have one or more 'Nazi victimization of Jews" subplot, which in the end ends up turning the movie into another one of those Holocaust Guilt Trips. I am thankful that the German mother-daughter family did not 'happen to be 'Jewish.'
Cargo (2009)
A visual Frankenstein (Space 2001 + Matrix + Alien2+ Solaris (Soviet version)
The movie is more full of plot holes than Swiss cheese. The trouble with German movies is that they stretch imagination. How did the stow-away Luddite survive several years on the ship without the cryogenics? How come the notoriously-Luddite marshal was not recognized before he was hired? In the end the antennas get destroyed so that the earthlings would not get false signals from them--that's well enough. But at the same time wouldn't the "Rheaites" be also be cut off from the communication from their home planet, i.e. Earch???? Believe me I am a germanophile and have a lot of respect for them. But German movies in general are awful in my view. They are simply not believable. They trust and even urge you to believe them but I simply can't. What a Pity.
Caníbal (2013)
Good effort, but predictable and complacent ending
From the beginning I could see where the movie was headed to: The closet cannibal has taste (in this case literally) for young women's flesh. Then, he meets a woman who places so much trust in him he is unable to kill, process and put in the freezer. Well, I tell you there are already hundreds of horror movies with storyline like this. It was too obvious from the beginning that Carlos had killed (and ate) Nina's sister Alexandra and that was why he was so unresponsive to Nina's romantic propositions. In the end he confesses to Nina and by doing so gave her an opportunity to turn him in to the police and clear the suspicion on herself. However Nina then attempts a murder-suicide on Carlos, which only ends up killing herself only. 9Was it an act of revenge for her sister Alexandra, or jealousy towards her that Carlos desired her so much to eat her but he did not desire her enough to want to eat herself?) The most glaring flaw in the plot is that the character's cannibalism does not relate to how the movie ends. Does cannibalism figure in how the movie ends? Not at all. As far as the plot line is concerned, the character of 'Carlos' did not need to be a cannibal at all. He could have been portrayed as just one of those simple, ordinary serial killers who targets young attractive women. I mean, cannibalism in this movie may be a sufficient condition but not a necessary condition. Almodova would have done it differently--What a pity. Also as a postscript the nude body of Alexandra/Nina is not well shaped enough to be the main piece of the final scenes--her waist is rather thick and her lower abdomen bulges---possible casting error.
Fargo (1996)
A good caricature of the white Midwest, but with a fly in the ointment
Fargo is a satire of the blankness and bleakness of the American Midwest. The movie is set as a crime story, but actually the Cohen brothers are poking fun at the monotonous, unimaginative, and humdrum life there under veneer of well-to-do. The thing is that the brothers are Jewish, and they were concerned that the white populace there would take the movie as what it really is—a social commentary on the goy way of life. Hence the solution, which is a racist solution—As a sop, create a nerdy and contemptible character and cast a colored person for the role, and balance it out. The Cohens picked an Asian because Asian Americans do not have an NAACP and would not picket the movie or create a ruckus unlike the blacks would have. That is why an Asian appears out of the blue in a movie set in Minnesota where less than 1% of the population is Asian. In other words, in a perverse way the Cohen brothers chose a racial solution to the political-correctness problem of their own movie. The dastardly solution speaks volumes for the Jewish brothers' essential cowardice, despite their apparent claim for making a social statement clothed in a crime story.