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Desibel (2022)
Acting beyond the limits
The real heart of this film is not the innovatively conceived and title-giving nature of the bombs invented by the villain, but the hard-hitting backstory. This story shows - this "villain" named Jeon Tae-seong (Lee Jong-suk) is not a villain at all. He is a man who wanted to be a hero in the most extreme situation imaginable, who wanted to trade his life for that of his brother. Down there, at the bottom of the sea, in a submarine for whose crew salvation will come so late that half the men will sacrifice themselves for the other half. From the hand of their commander Kang Do-young (Kim Rae-won) they pull strings, draw lots to see who gets to live and who has to die. Jeon Tae-seong draws life, his brother draws death... and Tae-seong is not allowed to change places with him. Hence his despair, his urge for retribution, especially since the truth about what happened down there has never come to light. So what happens above, in the daylight of action, gets its meaning from what literally as well as symbolically lies hidden in the deep.... and what takes one's breath away through the incredibly intense acting of Lee Jong-suk. When this actor portrays the despair of a man who has to send his brother to his death, it goes so deep, as if he were losing a human being just in reality. How he goes to the limit, how he cries and screams and his world collapses, that is incomparable, that is no longer a representation, but a reality that transports itself directly into the soul of the viewer. Personally, it makes me think of the way Bryan Garris screams, vocalist for Knocked Loose, arguably the most intense hardcore band of our day. Others just roar, like attackers, like men about to come to blows. Garris, on the other hand, screams from the wounded soul of someone who has already crossed the edge of despair. Lee Jong-suk plays the same way, it goes through the marrow. In one scene he even plays within the acting, in the chair of a military psychologist. One minute he is crying hopelessly, and in a split second his face changes to that of a bitter, cynical man asking if this was a good job now. Lee Jong-suk's portrayal of Jeon Tae-seong thus gives weight to the background story about a merciless triage and gives the "villain" a comprehensible reason for his urge for revenge and the step across borders after which there is no turning back. One of the best actors of our time, worldwide.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
The destruction of worlds
If you create a world, a cinematic universe, you gotta stick to it, be true to it, no matter what. "Rise Of The Machines" was a rock-solid rampage, a kind of playful popcorn-version of the second part, with a grim twist. "Salvation" was totally okay in its darkness, its consequence, its exploration of the hopeless future. Some pictures and the intense atmosphere of it still stucks in my brain and soul. To put it in musical terms: If the original "Terminator" was dark industrial music, "Judgement Day" was Hardrock and "Rise Of The Machines" was NuMetal, then "Salvation" was nasty Sludgerock. "Genisys" was a strange reboot and opened the gates upwards, but it had at least one very good and important idea: Introducing Skynet as at first "just" being a "comfortable" all-in-one-app on every smartphone and device of the world. This is exactly how it would begin if it would begin for real. But now - this! A fifth part ignoring three of its predecessors (plus the interesting tv-series "The Sarah Connor Chronicles") and destroying everything that matters in this narration. Literally - everything! John Connor. The rest of any logic. The rest of any dignity. The rest of any attempt or love for the myth. They try to tell an new one, but they don't care about it. Some single shots oder dialog parts just throw short references in - from which on a real fan of the stuff wants to know more! Especially - what exactly is Legion and who came up with it, when and why and with what kind of lies and justifications torwards the public? The idea of a cyborg building himself a life after having no instructor anymore is ridiculous, but at least it's a try of thinking out of the box. One could've made an eight-episode-show for Netflix out of this new material, exploring it, building up a new world on the ground of the old one they have unnecessarily destroyed. But all they give us is well-arranged action cinema, polished by the marketers and the advisors of current Zeitgeist. Finding Machine Head or Trivium writing a cheesy country-pop-album with some current rappers on it, couldn't be even worse.
Replicas (2018)
A flick that should've been a show
I'm saying this with all my love for Keanu Reeves, whose acting is regularly underrated by all the know-it-alls: This movie doesn't function at all. Although it has so much potential! The motivations are plausible, the emotional stakes are high and the story is an acceptable interpretation of the classical "mad professor"-motif. But the whole plot around the technology itself, the company which produces it and all the ethical and philosophical questions which rise around this cannot be worked out in a movie. At least not like that. Within the 107 minutes running time of this flick it becomes an unplausible, overhasty and clichéd construction. But: It could all be very well worked out within a show of 8, or better, of 16 episodes! "Replicas" demonstrates the main problem of storytelling in movies today - as we all got used of the brillant, slow-paced but substantial world-building of good shows, most movies can't keep up with that standards anymore.
The Package (2018)
The only thing the makers of this film love is nature
Otherwise it remains unexplainable how anyone could go there and do a portrait of modern youth being so abysmally dumb, awkward and childish. None of their actions are plausible or conceivable whatsoever, not even within the frame of a cartoon. Everything just tries to serve this appallingly plot about a cut off dick flying through the air, a cut off dick being sucked dry by a boy and a cut off dick being passionatly cleaned and pimped by a gay gas-station-owner who is always prepared to care about cropped penisses as long as they derive from active soldiers. Not to mention that the plot is furthermore about a dick being shown to an 11-year-old loud-mouth in order to domesticate the little beast, a dick being transplanted and cut off again by a psychopathic white-trash-girl who tends to castrate her boyfried over and over again and a dick being kept in a plastic cup of which the protagonist needs to drink a sip of water because he gets to nervous when it comes to finally reveal his love for the female hero. The only thing the makers of this film manage with a soupçon of dignity are the impressive shots of mountains, forests and lakes. All the rest causes embarassement while watching and deep sorrow for the young actors that they have to play within such an insult to any human intelligence. The writers are not ashamed of anything, not even of ignoring the obvious medical fact that you of course can't transplate "the wrong dick" to a person by accident. They are not ashamed of even undermatching the low standards of "American Pie", "Lemon Popsicle" or the newest Adam-Sandler-crimes like "The Week Of" by far. The unscrupulousness in which they treat the time-honored genres of "coming-of-age-movie" and "comedy" can only be explained by them deeply hating the youth of today and enjoying the fact to be well-paid for not writing a movie, but a 90-minute-long revenge for everything which their own offspring might have done to them in the last couple of years.