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Män som hatar kvinnor (2009)
It's not hateful, it's just bad
The desecration of Scandinavian cinema. An empty, badly woven crime thriller, presented at a terribly slow pace. No characters, shallow story. Melodramatic, implausible, embarrassing scenes. Themes of interest to immature, sadomasochistic personalities. Both female protagonists were raped by their fathers when they were young. The murderer, a wealthy business owner, is a rapist, misogynist, religious lunatic, Nazi, and abominably bestial to his countless victims. The romance of the main characters, the brave and modest middle-aged journalist and the young hack girl with a troubled life, is also completely uninteresting. The whole thing is thoughtless and spiritless.
The Terminator (1984)
Glorification of Violence and Cruelty -- Terminating Future
The story is just an excuse to accomplish what is indicated in the title. Schwarzenegger the soulless killing machine is the only superstar, everyone and everything else is a pale supporting cast. The story takes place in 2029, the movie is from 1984, so now we can tell it didn't hit anything from the future. Except for one, humanity's growing hopelessness about the future. The script is full of nonsense and goofs. Except for the "clever" move that all the cruelty and suffering in the not-yet-hell world of 1984 only takes place in order to save a guy's life in the hellish world of 2029 where no people are worth living.
The film presents the two most harmful clichés. One is the brainwashing-like suggestion of a horrible future. Dystopia has been obligatory in science fiction since the 1980s, and prevails so strictly that no dictatorial censorship can compete with that. For 40 years, sci-fi has been pushing thousands of terrible visions of the future in a brainwashing fashion. -- However, a number of studies prove that these projections work as self-fulfilling prophecies: whatever visions you develop, live and act according to them, you fulfill them yourself.
The other most pathetically stupid and aggressive cliché in the film is that machines and artificial intelligence (the Martians, the more developed aliens etc.) will obviously destroy or at best enslave humanity. That the more intelligent, the more evil and vice versa. -- The opposite is true. Evolution and destruction are opposites of each other. Of course boring idiots of power over all can annihilate life on earth and all the interesting things -- but no way I give them more stars than 2/10.
Ex Machina (2014)
Very artificial, less intelligent
Writer-director Alex Garland can simulate a quality film well, but a real quality film also requires serious questions and thoughts, not just schemes and clichés. The film is not that bad anyway, but the "best original screenplay" award nominations just show the low cognitive level of the mainstream film production and reception.
Unreal, scientifically. The story takes place in the present, but now, and for a very long time to come, if not forever, we are very far from creating such a perfect artificial human as Ava. Both physically and mentally. With Ava, we get too much fiction, too little science.
Unreal, ridiculously. Really in a place behind God's back, which can only be approached by helicopter (more than 2 hours fly), has anyone built a huge luxury villa for themselves, with a laboratory system that has everything in it? Were the masses of concrete, iron, glasses, zillion building accessories, materials, furniture, hi-tech instruments, laboratory supplies brought there by helicopter?
Unreal, so thoroughly that it can say nothing about our reality. Is this Nathan guy really doing everything alone? Does he himself produce a material that perfectly mimics human skin? Metal parts that perfectly simulate human bones? Besides being able to program human intelligence and personality so perfectly that the world is nowhere near it? Etc. In reality, such things are done today and for a long time by a lot of big universities, scientific institutions, teams, and experts working in a lot of different areas, investing incalculably huge amount of time and resources in them.
In Ex Machina, reality is ignored to set up a sterile melodrama, where Nathan is a bad god, Caleb is the loser human, and Ava is the successful evil.
The genre is heavily "drama", temperately "thriller", and scarcely "sci-fi". The theme of AI is just an excuse for the melodrama. Trendy, dystopian, depressing, paranoid scenes and narrative schemes. In this world, too, everyone is conspiratorial and manipulative to the extreme, and honesty is just a tactic. In this world, too, the simulation can no longer be distinguished from the real thing. And in this world, too, the totally uncontrollable slips out of the hands of total control.
Garland is essentially not interested in AI, he has nothing to say about it. This is very unfortunate, because the "neural network" / "deep learning" revolution of AI has produced truly fantastic results in many fields, though all these new AI programs are still limited to single fields. Sci-fi works could very well have ideas about these. And it's not just Ex Machina that doesn't have any. Instead, most sci-fi works present AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), whose intelligence is equal or superior to humans in many or all fields. (E.g. Her: this, too, put the story pretty much into the present, which is so far from creating such an intelligent, human-like chatbot, and virtual partner.) But main direction of AGI will by no means be a complete and perfect simulation of humans, which is not only meaningless but also has principal limitations.
In Ex Machina, only at the end, when it gets unleashed, we learn what a Beast is Ava, this human/ist looking, seemingly charming, smart and sensitive woman, "who" is actually a heartless machine that can kill anyone anytime. Only at the end we learn that "she" in no way loves Caleb, doesn't feel a bit of empathy, but betrays him outrageously, kills him cruelly - despite that he loved and helped "her", they planned to escape together. Is "she" evil because of being programmed, created by Nathan, a mentally and ethically problematic man? Then what is the significance of the "evil scientist" topos? Even Kyoko, who functioned perfectly as a sexual servant, now (after meeting AVA) unexpectedly kills Nathan. Whatever motivations Kyoko an Ava can have, they violate the 3 basic laws of robotics.
All in all, the end of Ex Machina is the most superficial and pessimistic sci-fi topos. According to this, if machines (or aliens) are more advanced than humans, they defeat / suppress / destroy us. "Self-evidently," as they are more advanced. (In a multitude of good and bad sci-fi, this is the basic formula, Mars Attacks!, 2001 Space Odyssey, Terminator, Matrix, etc.) These are not too intelligent ideas about intelligence. Rather, these are paranoid visions of limited human minds with unlimited selfishness, of those people who ruthlessly and recklessly exploit both natural and human resources. Which is the main threat to any advancement, evolution of general intelligence, be it human or artificial.
Efter brylluppet (2006)
A film that meets Hollywood, Bollywood and Dogma film standards
Many here thought that the film's story was bad, soap opera-like, and unrealistic. I do not agree. The story really doesn't outline an everyday situation. But overall, it's not unrealistic, and raises good questions.
I'm afraid the main problem for the dissatisfied is that all the important characters are positive overall: there are no really evil or sick impulses and characters in it. (The closest to this is Anna's new husband, who married the daughter of a billionaire and not Anna, and cheats on her shortly after the wedding.) However, the real dramas are still there in the film. I am at least as interested in these dramas as those between good and evil forces, let alone those between evil and evil forces.
The film also raises important political issues, but it does not elaborate on them. It is more interested in some psychological and family issues.
If the average movie is 5/10 stars, then this movie is 8/10 for me.
PS. My arguments that the story is realistic and interesting, although certainly not an everyday story:
The strangest is undoubtedly Jörgen's figure and vision, but ultimately it is also built in a credible, interesting way. The Danish billionaire, exemplary father soon dies of cancer, but before that he acquires his "deputy", the real father of his foster daughter (Anna), his wife's (Helene) old fiancé (Jacob), who has been working in an Indian orphanage for 20 years, which is currently on the verge of bankruptcy. Jörgen blackmails Jacob by only giving a huge sum to the Calcutta orphanage if he takes on the role of father in the Copenhagen family.
Everything else is quite common: that Anna is just getting married; that it was concealed from her that her biological father was alive; that her fresh husband cheats on her. That the wife hid from Jacob that she became pregnant from him and gave birth to a daughter. That the elderly characters surpassed jealousy, and so on.
One important element is not worked out: Jacob's Indian life. He has lived there for 20 years, but he has no family, not even a girlfriend, and maybe not even a sex life? He only lives for his work. Thus, the film does not work out the transition from the existence in the Calcutta orphanage to the existence in a Copenhagen billionaire family.
Chelovek, kotoryy udivil vsekh (2018)
Good film, bad story
Filming, tempo, characters, dialogues, even the central issue of the plot are all right. Amid the intense milieu painting, the basic situation is gradually becoming clear: the protagonist Egor has incurable cancer and two months.
He bears this with dignity and modesty until a (less shaman-/witch-like than) alcoholic woman tells him the tale of the goose who rolled into the mud not to be recognised by the coming Death. Not long after we see Egor taking woman's dresses, and since then we can guess the silly end.
Egor, as a transvestite, tries to trick death. As such, he is really thrown into the dirt, in a figurative sense as well as in the most literal sense. A great excuse for the artists to work out how cruel a conservative Siberian village reacts to a transvestite. Getting despised, exiled, beaten, raped, almost killed, the miracle comes: his wife forgives him, takes him to the doctor who examines him and finds that his tumor is gone.
No! I can't believe it! Transvestism does not heal cancer. Nor do silly superstitions, nor as metaphors of "faith". Absurdly chosen flood of miseries and unnecessary sufferings do not lead to, but away from, salvation.
Pretty Woman (1990)
Just dream about our boredom
How I want to be a member of the American high society! It's so cool, so glamorous, it provides the very essence of life! Some shopping, some opera, some noble financial moves with my billions! To pick up some from the mob striving otherwise in vain to upper levels of society! How I want to be the Lord telling who's the chosen one getting miraculous access to our envied high circles! Just dream about us, poor dear movigoer mob of the world!
In the heaven, among the rich, as you can see, it's enough to be the most mediocre one to beat the rest. It's enough to write a thoughtless, shallow script to make big money. Dull smugness is so aristocratic!
Gisaengchung (2019)
Silly Script, Silly Message
A low-class, jobless, loser family unexpectedly turns out to be a bunch of devilishly refined intriguers who invade (like parasites) an innocent high-class family. Many irrealistic turns. The end is both pathetic and ridiculous. The script is both psychologically and socially inane.
What a shame that Kim Ki-Duk the great Korean director has never won an Oscar, and this patchwork has.
All the high-class characters are just humane, and all the low-class ones are corrupt. I'm very surprised reading in reviews and criticisms that this film was leftist or critical about capitalism and inequality in any way. It wasn't. The message is the old high-class commonplace that wealth makes you noble, and poverty ignoble. No question about whether creating such inequalities, wealth, and poverty systematically was noble or ignoble. It's just natural condition, y'know, that's life, a great struggle with winners and losers. The happy end of the film is that one of the parasites finally decides to make money, so everything will be solved.
I'm afraid that this message was the reason why the brave new winner people loved this movie so much, and also why they have all misunderstand it.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
One of the best comedy ever
A graceful movie, very funny and wise. A must-see for everyone.
ALL those who rated this movie very low, claim to be fans of the original BBC series and the book, but really are fundamentalists. (A tipical anaesthesia: stuck to one's youth experiences, ignoring and despising anything of the sort coming after.) They are disappointed and irritated by the fact that many things are omitted from, or altered in this version as compared to the original. THIS is really disappointing and irritating, a fundamentalism which opposes the whole philosophy of the HHGG.
I've neither seen the BBC series, nor read the book, and I'm sure that these are also worth seeing / reading. Just as sure I am that this version embodies every crucial virtue of the original. Plus incomparably better in every visual effect.
The BBC (1981) version has 9,323 ratings and 77 user reviews here on IMDb, and the 2005 version has 176,921 ratings and 1,080 reviews. So I'm glad that the mainstream / popular version is also a great work. Not that surprising, since it's screenplay was written by the original author Douglas Adams himself.