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gregoryno6
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King of Killers (2023)
I think I'm done with Frank Grillo movies.
Frank Grillo was excellent in the second Purge movie. When I looked for him here on IMDB I realised I'd seen him already, in The Grey with Liam Neeson. Two very different characters, but he hit the right notes for each.
King of Killers is not in the same class. I watched it through to the end - maybe that makes me King of Masochists. The whole business was flat. Ninety minutes running time, but the fighting is barely begun by the end of the first hour. I was left with nothing but an oh yeah, so what? Sensation at the final twists. Frank's a good bad guy and he's recruiting to take on the bad bad guys. By killing the top assassins in the world. Riiiiiiight.
King of Killers is to Frank Grillo's resume what Apex was to Bruce Willis's. At least Frank still has the potential to rise above this dreck. Bruce ain't so lucky.
One other point: what exactly was the point of Ryan Tarrant's character? Was he there to lend some antipodean flavour with his Australian accent - which we barely heard, because he barely had a word to say?
The Last of Us (2023)
In the end it just wasn't that great.
Pros: the chemistry between Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The infected - genuinely scary. The different responses to the threat of cordyceps - martial law, living in solitude, free community.
Cons: Too much of the script fell back on 'sullen dad and surrogate daughter exchange acerbic banter while waiting for something to happen.' Episode 3 - Brokeback Cordyceps. Thanks for the sermon on man-lovin' men having the same right to post-apocalyptic happiness as everyone else. Yeah, that really moved the story along.
There was also a distinct shortage of appearances by the infected in the second half of the season. A couple more of those moments like the appearance of the Bloater were needed.
Good enough to keep me watching to the end, but I won't be back for season 2.
Flux Gourmet (2022)
The Flux Gourmet dilemma.
Is Flux Gourmet a very dry straight faced joke about pretentious modern art?
Or is it a perfect example of pretentious modern art?
I'm tending towards the latter.
Recommended if you want a movie that takes the idea behind the baked beans scene in Blazing Saddles and stretches it to feature length. Otherwise, if you really must watch a Peter Strickland movie, find The Duke of Burgundy instead.
The Ipcress File (2022)
Another classic film becomes second rate tv crud.
When you take a movie that clocked in at under two hours (1 hr, ten minutes to be precise) and translate it into a six hour miniseries - well, that's a lot of extra story to be found, isn't it?
I could put up with the feminist wokeism, enlarging Jean's story and reducing Harry's, but the writing overall is pretty damn lame. Motivations have been dramatically altered and superfluous subplots have been added. All for nothing, except to keep the ad breaks apart.
I wish I could Ipcress myself and forget I'd ever seen this.
Apex (2021)
Apex? More like an abyss.
My rule on IMDB ratings is simple. If a movie's 1 star reviews count for 10 percent or more of the total reviews, it's one to avoid.
Apex currently stands at 135 reviews. Of which, 73 give it 1 star.
I thought that put in the 'So bad it's good' category. Nope, it's so bad it's just really bad.
The scriptwriters seem familiar with an Australian movie called Turkey Shoot aka Blood Camp Thatcher. I'll say no more about that. But if you saw the trailer and thought 'Yipppee ki yay! Old Guy Dies Hard!' you'd be sorely mistaken. Bruce Willis doesn't dodge and strike in Apex. He hides, mostly, and wheezes like an asthmatic with a two pack a day habit. John McClane and Thomas Malone are worlds apart.
And then there's the berries. The berries are weird, Bruce! You're going to start seeing things! Uh, not that I noticed. Unless he hallucinated killing ten mercenaries in about five minutes, demonstrating kill skills that he'd failed to exhibit during the first two thirds of the movie.
A film can be entertaining even if it's not particularly original. Apex is neither. It's a corpse that's had all the blood drained out of it. But that assumes it had some blood in it to start with...
Dinner in America (2020)
Smart and funny. I enjoyed this Dinner!
To everyone connected to Dinner In America - your fantastic and funny movie made it to the Revelation Film Festival here in Perth. And the audience loved it!
Great performances, excellent script. The opening scenes set Simon up as a lowlife creep - but like Patty, his awkward and unlucky girlfriend, he turned out to have some hidden talents.
If you can't get a DVD release please submit Dinner In America to Revelation's archive REVonDemand!
American Horror Story (2011)
AHS Apocalypse: where did all the good stuff go?
Season 8 started so well. Panic in the streets. A plane with no pilot. The mushroom clouds! The Outpost! Miss Venable, the dictator in purple! Warlocks vs Witches! And hellspawn himself, The AntiChrist!
The crossovers to earlier seasons didn't feel forced or gimmicky. Everything was good. It was cooking up into a beautiful piece of storytelling.
And then came episode 8.
Splat.
Something was added to the script team's coffee. Or maybe something was taken out of the script team's coffee. Either way, with episode 8 a great season hit the wall.
Sandra Bernhard took her club act to a black mass. Abuse and insults for the congregation. Hilarious.
For an encore we got the Puddingbowl Twins. Imagine Eldon Tyrell if he'd done coke and let his mother cut his hair.
The one truly AHS moment of episodes 8 and 9 was the pentagram of death. Shocking, disgusting, and brilliant.
Onward to the final chapter. I'm not hopeful.
The Predator (2018)
So grateful I got a freebie on my cinema card.
The Predator felt like a movie made on the first draft - no, the first half draft of the script. That point in the process where the scriptwriters are bored or drunk, or both, and just type any rubbish that comes into their heads. Jokes, dismemberment, whatever. Somehow the producers thought it was brilliant.
"Let's get those cameras rolling!'
And the final scene reeked of Eau De Sequelle. Be warned.
Holiday (2018)
It's no Holiday for the audience.
I had the misfortune to watch this movie at Revelation Film Festival this afternoon. Rev's blurb describes Holiday as 'deep, disturbing, and truly powerful'. Maybe they had to edit for space? 'Oh yeah, there's a rape scene as well. Very graphic. VERY graphic. We just thought we'd warn you in advance.' Yeah - I guess that line was considered superfluous.
And this was the work of a woman director. Yay women directors! If a man had his name on this, I don't think deep disturbing and truly powerful would be the adjectives employed. In fact the whole movie is such a void that this vile scene seems to be there only to differentiate it (in the worst way possible) from all the other movies about brainless young women and their moody crim boyfriends.
Skip this Holiday. Stay home!
Mars (2010)
A new view of the Red Planet.
I saw Mars two nights ago at Revelation Film Festival here in Perth. There is just so much wit and creativity in this movie. The script is sharp, the visuals are brilliant, and Kinky Friedman is the sort of President I'd vote for if I was American. Apart from Kinky the cast were unfamiliar to me, but their performances were all spot on. The marsnauts were especially good in the way they portrayed the shifts in and between their characters. The movie's animation style is somewhat like Waking Life - or some parts of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards - with live action being the base and other elements drawn in. The credits show very neatly how a scene with two marsnauts in their rover is built up. Two people sitting in chairs, with a little magic and a lot of hard work, become space travelers driving across the martian landscape. So why only 9 out of 10? Because so far as I can tell, there is no DVD release in the offing. Damn, because I'd really like to see Mars again. And again.
Radio Free Albemuth (2010)
Faithful to its source material.
I saw RFA at the Revelation Film Festival here in Perth two nights ago. I haven't read the book, but Dick fans in the audience seemed well pleased. One said he was surprised at how much of the book had made it into the film. Translating any book to the screen is difficult, but a book by Philip K Dick would be doubly so. After seeing Blade Runner I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and found the detachment and lack of emotion very off-putting. For example, Roy Baty doesn't deliver a stirring monologue in his final moments. His death is reduced to one cold sentence - something like, "Deckard went into the room where Roy was standing, and retired him." On the basis of the Dick novels I have read, I would say that John Simon, the scriptwriter and director, added just the right degree of emotional tension. Ambiguity is another common feature in Dick's writing. In the book Do Androids etc, Deckard is left wondering whether one of his co-workers is a replicant. This is the question that Ridley Scott transferred to Deckard himself in the movie. Radio Free Albemuth left me wondering again and again, were these people really hearing divine voices? Or were they just a bunch of free-ranging nutters? 9 out of 10 for a well made and thought provoking film.