Change Your Image
polkabike-38413
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Saltburn (2023)
Provocative auteur kino!
50 shades of grey with explicit scenes of depravity and debauchery against the backdrop of so many 20th century films from the melancholy lust porn genre. The rich, cynical and jaded nobility is as clueless as need be for the protagonist to have the plot armor to lick smeg off bathtubs, pork fresh graves in the rain, eat menstrual blood and kill a bunch of them while never permanently losing their favor or arousing clear suspicion.
I've found that I like to imagine that John Waters is the author of the film and see it as absurdist, perverse, campy satire of supposedly serious high-brow porn like Damage, Crash, Dreamers etc. I becomes more palatable this way. If the author were brave enough they'd present it as such instead of hiding behind the veneer of 'auteur' art house cinema.
Clock (2023)
Coo of Cronenberg
In the hands of Cronenberg this would have been a masterpiece. A social and critique, a historical critique, an encompassing philosophical essay on the physics and metaphysics of suffering. A critique of the dehumanizing fetishization of suffering, no matter be it originating from the oppressor or the oppressed. A deconstruction of the illusions of female empowerment in the 21st century. Just so much in this film.
But, we live in hululand. Yay! Where now you can see what your favorite authors would have looked like if they were run through a streaming service Christmas movie filter.
Some amazing potential, ideas and material simply given to fools to squander, in theme with the prominent issues the film attempts to tackle while having a gingerbread house tied around it's ankles.
Doraibu mai kâ (2021)
What superhero movies are to mainstream film industry
This aesthetically pleasing nonsense is to the alternative/indie/art film industry what superhero movies are to the mainstream film industry. Mumblecore without a plot and a slather of heavy visual sheen, a one-note cultural commentary that gets lost in the excessive run time. Self-indulgent fan-service poignant silences are the equivalent of self-indulgent fan-service battle sequences, both equally devoid of meaningful content, merely emulating it. Visually, there's pensive smoking, there's old cars, there's lots of static shots and retro ambiance, it's really about as close to a vapid netflix show as you can get without it being an actual netflix.
Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022)
Cystic Pizza
The male lead is the anti-Sandler. The female lead is a sexualized husk who's 50 shades character had more depth. The story is obliviously offensive tropes in a trendy chips bag that's mostly factory air. I hate it.
UnREAL (2015)
Both brilliant and awful
An old timey soap format that manages to sell itself to newer generations by pretending it's about a modern television plague while at the same time revealing the reality television IS soaps just much much poorer, which is brilliant! But then before you know it it's getting you to watch a soap. Which is awful.
Jungle (2017)
Either a Werner Herzog movie or the first real, true, big budget The Room
If you know what I'm talking about, what corresponding aspects I am referring to and how this changes the context of the movie in either of the cases - well my good pally-o, then I nod at you discreetly because we're smart people amidst a hostile jungle full of idiots.
Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special (2022)
Serene troubles instead of troubled serenity
This review is really just for me because I have to make a record of it. What mister Macdonald did here is illustrate that even though he had terminal cancer and then died of terminal cancer, it's his colleagues left alive, filmed commenting on this work, that are worse off then dead, contorting inside self-imposed cages in needless, useless, stifling agony of chaotic, dishonest "composure" and "tact". For what? For fear of losing the illusory comforts and privileges of what amounts to a spasmatic personal hell. They were the ones hard to watch, not the terminally ill and then deceased mister Macdonald. He, instead, walked a fine line between bitterness and christ-like gentleness throughout the whole thing, doing it with an almost-angelic ease, but always bobbing toward gentleness, with a final triumphant hooray of love. I don't know of anyone who approaches and dismantles cynicism with such kindness and wit, without fear of or hatred of it, illustrating that the choice between the two might be much easier then it's portrayed. I am not a religious person, but this wonderful, mindfully complex human being has enriched a part of me that can most accurately be described as soul. Thank you forever Norm.
Svart krabba (2022)
Netflix: Americanizing Scandinavia since 2012
Soldiers are sent to transport military stuff across ice behind enemy lines. These are not maintained ice surfaces, but ice surfaces in the wilderness. Yet they don't give them skiis, they give them skates. But they're badass dusty-black skates. They go into the frozen environment wearing badass dusty-black military apparel. Then, very quickly, a an experienced woman soldier falls through the ice so mrs Rapace can get a chance dive in after her and be naked. They go into an abandoned house to warm her up, build a fire in a fireplace and the enemy finds them because they built a chimney-stack fire in an abandoned town in enemy territory - but they all attack a fellow soldier, suspecting he "ratted" them out. And that moment, at the 40-minute mark became too dumb for me. If I want to watch trashy american pulp I don't need or want Scandinavians in it, thank you, much appreciated.
The Night House (2020)
Not a horror, a parable drama
This is not a horror, it's an existential drama based on parables and metaphors. Imagine this film filled with Scandinavian actors, happening in Denmark or Sweden. It's about a marriage in crisis and depression. It's very, very much about depression and the way it can, in a seemingly supernatural manner, as a strange presence, seduce and pull persons into a bizarrely, grotesquely "sweet", inebriated state of being, drowning in an almost otherworldly molasses of darkness. How well does the film accomplish this task or goal? Quite well, above adequate.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
The Today Movie
This thing doesn't just have regular plot holes or logical inconsistencies, it has scene hole, moment to moment holes, blink and you'll miss it holes. It is in fact entirely made of holes! My teenage cousin got frustrated while watching it and he likes robot dinosaurs!
This might, by some stretch of imagination, be okay if it weren't clear - from so many self-important pop-up references to personal enterprise and industry, attempts at did-you-get-it political issues critique and just awkward piggybacking on all the current popular social issues from the pandemic, war on insert-noun, veterans, STEM, disenfranchised youth, patriarchy, feminism - that somebody thought they were making a CLEVER action flick. As is to be expected, these moments and attempts summed up also contradict and nullify each other.
There once was a time when this couldn't even pass for public access cable, that time was before the reign of the tech mogul gnomes. It turns out that the only thing that kept nerds smart and hard working was the absence of social recognition.
The Lodge (2019)
Challenging cultural commentary!
A family of upper-class, oblivious, self-centered idiots previously unpunished and uncorrected by society or life, uses and manipulates a frail young girl to their own detriment while outside the protections of a self-endulgant society.
Miranda Veil (2020)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary I HAPPENED UPON THIS GEM
Gem of a film. If it were just slightly more grim, sedate and in Russian it would have seemed like a lost Taskovsky film. But I'm glad it's not.
The Twilight Zone (2019)
Roderick Serlington Jr. AKA Lil Lol Twilight
Imagine if you will a world where Rod Serling had a grandson who doesn't care about telling good stories, doesn't care about exploring the human condition, all he cares about is cashing in on the T-Zone dineros while making pop culture references that concern social media trending issues. Until he runs out of them and then just straight up makes general pop culture references concerning anything that's trending or was trending recently and just jjjjjjjams in ghosts and ghostly reveals because hey it's the Twilight Zone. And if he were forced by the actual ghost of Rod Serling to make a decent episode the best he could come up with would be the following: Okay so there's an American man who wants to go to Germany cause he think it's cool, but when he comes there everyone has a Hitler mustache and he's like whaaat but it's like they're not aware of it it's just hipsters, but when he comes home we finally see his face and instead of eyebrows he has TWO HITLER MUSTACHES ABOVE HIS EYES but HE'S not aware of it.
Okay, that's actually pretty entertaining, so imagine that but waaay worse. Just awful, awful.
The Straight Story (1999)
Detailing the charm, lies and excuses of a crumbling empire
Can David Lynch make a straight story? Is there anything straight about the straight story? This is a film that explores the myths and lore of a crumbling empire, attempting to package them all into one work without veering into the abstract or sacrificing a plot while smuggling this intent under the view of the audience. A wretched, cunning, caring, loving, spiteful, stubborn, foolish, wise and kind, weak and strong old man that has done and seen awful things but is good at heart, alone in the world taking care of his simple but bright child, doing good in the end - uncle Sam.
Throughout the course of the film unwanted pregnancies have simple causes and solutions, rural strangers are kind and interesting, swindlers are likeable buffoons, family is the most important thing even when you wreck it, war is bad but the fight and camaraderie are good, businesswomen are hysterical clowns with no sense of opportunity, doctors want to help but refusing them is a trait of one's character not trait of one's poverty, inane and dangerous schemes that can easily be executed in a simpler and smarter manner are brave and beautiful and finally in the end there's no need for men to ever talk about their thoughts and feelings with those closest to them.
David Lynch is, as always, a brilliant human being.
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Awful and derivative, like store-brand cola
Whether it's Star Trek or not is unimportant. Why? Because it's bad Sci-Fi and bad drama on a general level. The plot and development are near non-existent excuses for uninteresting and poorly rendered space clashes. The characters are flat as are the performances, though the actors are not to blame. The Klingons are stylized into an oblivion of glitter and gloss, which is possibly the worst thing one can do to a Klingon, as an established fictional character or as a hypothetical individual. It's camp, but without self-awareness, so it's trash. It's a budget space epic you buy on a sale on Stea, who's cutscenes have been re-enacted and made into a show, on youtube. There's one simple thing which illustrates all these points all too well - nearly all scenes are violently stuffed with superimposed lens flares which have no apparent origin or source within a scene.