Reviews

Having just finished the movie, I can't help but feel a little conflicted. On the other hand I love this kind of movies with plenty of gore, questionable scenes to laugh at, also including unexplainable random horniness every time there's a chance... but why does it feel it has to come with the expense of having an actual screenplay in the film?

I don't know if I'm missing something but a lot of the key elements in the story are completely left without any explanation or connection to each other, like who was the bad guy, a devil's servant or some lunatic just obsessed with completing some Nostradamus' prophecies? The lady who was serving as a staff member at the movie theater, she never revealed us anything about the place that nobody seemed to know even existed. At first I thought she was also a part of a plot to trap those people in there but nothing came out of it, she just became one member of the mass who tried to survive at the theater, what a red herring and a wasted opportuntity of getting some sense to what was going on. What about the entrances just turning into concrete walls? I guess that'll happen, okay, not just lazy screenwriting then!

I could go on but it's no use. My point is that I'd like to like the movie much more and I see no reason why they'd have to make so many silly shortcomings on the plot area, and I've seen this too many times in this kind of movies. The movie has a lot of fun and cool scenes, but their impact is a little dimmed because of the other faults. I still love the special effects and the characteristic giallo aesthetic. My honorable mention goes to the scene where the second woman to turn into a demon goes through the process while lying in front of the crowd with the movie still running in the back. Her human teeth falling off while she's making inhuman moaning sounds of agony and also some grotesque pleasure gave me actual chills.

The soundtrack is a little all over the place with classic Argento style wild synth music and more international glam metal of the 80s, it tells me the scenes are clearly made to be fun! And it's okay, fun I did have indeed, but it feels like all the elements were there to make the movie a fair amount better with not that much trouble and it frustrates me, man! Just take a couple extra weeks to get the script together, is it so much to ask?

6/10.

It's a decent adaptation, The Grapes of Wrath. Sure, it feels a bit like a fast run of some of the events but the pacing is not a big issue and the characters are mainly very well acted, especially Henry Fonda as Tom Joad and Jane Darwell as Ma Joad. Their mother-son relationship was one of the carrying forces in the book as well as the strong character of Ma Joad. They were delivered well in the film too! Especially the scene where Tom asks Ma to dance with him was very touching in my opinion and I don't remember them having such in the book so that was a great addition. Also I think the ending the book had wouldn't have worked in a film mode because of the fact that Tom left the family some time before the story ended and the final scene wouldn't have been very fitting in the movies of the time, I reckon.

Having just read the book, however, I couldn't help but feel that the movie fell a little short in what comes to some of the other characters and the relations between them such as the brotherhood between Tom and Al Joad. Al, in the picture, was a very minor character who just drove the truck and tried to chase girls. In the book one of my favorite scenes was where Al, who kind of admires and looks up to Tom, got mad at himself because the truck busted on the road and they had to get new parts from a repair shop. Tom straightened him and told the punk not to think everything should go just as he thinks and it's not his fault. I wish I had an older brother who could have been like that. Guess you can't fit everything there but it was a segment I enjoyed a lot as a young man myself. Then there's a lot of interaction between Ma and Rose of Sharon in the book as well and I found some of it humorous too because Rose of Sharon was a little too tender and foolish at times and Ma tried to toughen her up a lot. None of that was presented in the film either.

The little oofs I paid attention to: The character of Noah Joad. Sure, he wasn't very remarkable in the book either but the way they handled him in the film was really weird. He was there at the beginning and the part in which he decided to leave the family and go off on his own was left out entirely so he just disappeared without any remarks being made about it. Without reading the book it is impossible to know why he suddenly isn't there anymore. Also the casting of Casy the ex-preacher raised my eyebrows a bit. The actor John Carradine was actually a year younger than Henry Fonda whose character he claims to have baptized in the movie too! Couldn't they at least leave that line out? I always imagined he was like 50-60 years old anyway.

Last say on the look and cinematography in the movie: I think they were great and the movie captured the nighttime sequences absolutely beautifully. The long shots John Ford uses to show the characters and the truck they drove against the rugged terrain surrounding them are stunning considering the era the film was made. That kind of visual look must've influenced many generations to come and I can see similar aspects in many of my favorite movies as well. The man deserved his Oscar, I think.

8/10

Nightcrawler is a film about seeking for media attention gone too far. Up-to-date subject, yes. The production value is good too: the movie is very beautifully shot and what one sees on the screen, pleases one's eyes. A well-shot film it also should be, after all the movie is mostly about filming anyways...

However, no matter how beautiful Nightcrawler looks, it cannot hide the fact that the story is very ugly, almost repulsive. The main character Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a sociopath for whom empathy towards human life seems to be totally beyond comprehension. He doesn't care if people lose their lives, he just wants to get them on the film. Actually he wants people to die so he could film them. The truth, however, is revealed to the viewer only gradually. Many signs fit to the diagnosis of psychopathy, though. I mean, Louis can be a very slim, clever and charming person when he wants to. He can also lie to anyone with a perfect poker face. This pretty much reminds me of another psychopath main character in film, Patrick Bateman (American Psycho).

As the film progresses, the viewer sees Louis' progression from a courageous-seeming self-made-man to a psychopath with no boundaries. For me, this made the watching increasingly harder simply because I started to feel more and more scorn towards Louis. I guess that is a good sign, most likely I possess some sort of morale. This must also be the objective of the filmmakers and I must say that the film is truly impressive, it left its mark on me.

I was very much sucked into the events of the film and for all the credibility and immersion I must thank the film crew. Nightcrawler is made very well and Jake Gyllenhaal delivers his role magnificently (he didn't even get an Oscar nomination?!). Also his counterpart, the main character's employee Rick (Riz Ahmed) is a big part of the film. Rick is, well, maybe a little pathetic and failed in life but he still has that morale and suspicion that the viewer wants to hear said out loud. He is the voice of reason. Too bad that his boss is too crazy to hear him. All the same, I love these two characters and how their performances complement each other.

Once the viewer is done with the movie, he/she is probably quite anguished. This movie is dark and intense. At this point, some people may decide that they don't like the film because it "didn't make them happy" or something like that. Think again, my friend! I think a good movie makes a difference and IS provoking. Nightcrawler is a stand- out piece.

9/10

So, I just wanted some exciting horror for the night. My expectations were definitely not high, since horror movies often are just stupid. They are good though if they succeed in entertaining me at some level.

This movie here, as you might see from the low score I gave it, wasn't very entertaining. Chernobyl Diaries started off with some basic young adult's vacation stuff, having fun and all, yeah. In comes Uri who takes a group of friends and other travelers to Pripjat to take a look at the ghost town. Unsurprisingly their car won't start when they are about to leave the place after the tour. From there on, everything goes wrong and the group starts to gain casualties as the hostile residents of the so called ghost town attack them...

They got angry dogs and random radioactively contaminated angry people who seem to be unable to communicate in any human level but are just about enough smart to get the group members one at a time. For some reason they just kill them, I guess they want to eat them or something. I don't understand why they even would keep lurking in the shadows since they have an overwhelming superiority of people. It's just so stupid. Why would there even be people left in Pripjat?

On rare occasion movies just get worse all the time. Chernobyl Diaries is a great example of that kind of movie. It feels like every scene just sinks the movie deeper into stupidity, irrationality and clichés. It's not even entertaining: no humor can be found and I couldn't even laugh at any funny looking monsters since they barely even showed them. These mutant people were just a gray mass of meat with faces like the Slipknot singer Corey Taylor's current mask.

As a summary, let's say that in this movie you can find a bunch of clichés, boring characters (close to the end I just hoped they all would die soon), boring monsters, cheap special effects and one amusing jump scare (the bear). The setting was a good chance gone to waste. This movie could easily have been much better if someone had told the writers about a little thing called imagination. In this movie there is pretty much nothing original or interesting whatsoever.

2/10

The Revenant is another snowy western that's come out recently, the other being The Hateful Eight. They are very different kind of movies though: H8 is much about killing and talking, Revenant about not dying and not talking!

Anyways, The Revenant is a good and beautiful movie that tells a story which is interesting in a way. See, this is one of those movies in which some character is a little evil already and only needs a tiny push to fall to "the dark side", if you will. Same as in Saruman in LOTR and Sgt. Barnes in Platoon. Tom Hardy does a really good job playing a bad-ass character as usual. That character (Fitzgerald) also loses his honor and becomes a coward...

As I said, a major part of the movie is plainly about Hugh Glass trying to live on to avenge his son. Leonardo DiCaprio acts realistically but I'm not sure if this is the movie he should get the Oscar from. That should've happened already. Not a single character in this movie really does anything I could REALLY remember them from. They do what they're supposed to but there is not much interesting dialogue like in, well Hateful Eight for example. Instead, what we find is an amazing story of survival, betrayal and revenge that is detached from the characters themselves. It's quite universal.

I love the cinematography here and the movie is very enjoyable to watch, really. I long to go camping in clean and fresh forests and mountains, drink straight from a river. Maybe I'll just pack my bags and head for Lapland. Maybe I got a little carried away. Nice views and excellent work there whatsoever.

Finally, if there is something that bothered me during watching The Revenant, it's the sound mixing/editing. I often felt like I was listening to three layers of sounds and music. Even the silent parts often had some sort of weird humming or screeching in the background. It made me feel nervous in the bad way. The actual sounds of the movie + the score were enough. Someone fix that for me?

8/10

This movie was crazy! I like watching such films. Johnny Depp does a great and carefully prepared role as a strange journalist who spends time on mostly anything but what he came to Vegas for. Using drugs and fooling around. First I thought he was overacting, then I understood that this is how it's supposed to go. Benicio del Toro also delivers a good performance of the main character Duke's lawyer and friend Dr. Gonzo who is at least as crazy and messed up throughout the whole flick as Duke.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas barely had a plot but with this idea, I wouldn't even expect it. It was really fun anyways, though with a dark twist. Drugs are bad, m'kay? But seriously, the main characters stupidest moments made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I still laughed...

My friend showed me some kind of depicting of the day in the novel's writer Hunter S. Thompson's life, where he mostly uses drugs and smokes cigarettes all day before starting to write in the middle of the night. I don't know how much of it was true but after watching this movie, I sure can understand that there lies somewhat the truth.

Seven out of ten, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas doesn't shine all the time but does entertain and makes you wonder what the hell is going on. I recommend.

7/10