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Reviews
Powder Blue (2009)
A great cast with poor writing, editing and patchy directing
Some fine acting on display throughout with a stellar cast who aren't given enough to work with as the script writing falls far short of what it should be.
The cinematography and colourful LA characters work fantastically, but parts of the story are either drawn out waaay too long or ended waaaay too quickly, showing an editor that has lost their focus. We get that Charlie is a strip dancer and while it's amazing to see Biel's body on display for the titillation factor, her last dance is the only one we really needed to move the story along. This also could have been done much better, instead of her simply stopping dancing, a scene of inner conflict would have been more interesting where she tried to force herself to keep dancing sensually (for her child), while trying o live up to a self imposed standard for her new sweet/innocent boyfriend. Her story line ended in a completely disjointed way - where was the grief for her son and her rebirth, properly edited and directed and this could have made the movie. However it seemed like they were pressed for time, so left the best parts on the cutting room floor.
Ray Liotta's character was almost comical, seeing him die in the snow almost made me laugh. Poorly done make up and some very odd scene choices (he really let his daughter give him half a lap dance before saying no?) made the character seem unrealistic and shallow.
Not enough story cross over between the fallen priest/trans character paths and the stripper/father/mortician story path looked like they were trying to make 2 movies for the price of one. This is either poor editing, writing or direction or a combination of both.
All in all a movie that could have been fantastic, had it been written/directed/edited better.
Messiah (2020)
Very good, well acted and reasonably well balanced
In the vein of the excellent series Homeland, you are often wondering whether the central characters have either lost it or are completely sane. This shows excellent editing/direction/dialogue from the creators who often leave you feeling equally unsettled and sure of convictions about the motives/truth of the main protagonist. One minute you are convinced he must be what he says he is, the next you are equally convinced it's all a ruse.
Plot holes abound that should have been resolved. For instance, if he was a magician walking on water, he would have needed significant setup under the water to allow him to do this (perspex plates, I believe have been used by other magicians). This could have easily been resolved by those seeking to validate/disprove him as the true messiah.
Would have been excellent if it was extended for another few seasons, as long as it had an ending (either way would have been good). Unfortunately it was scrapped, possibly for not being tight enough as there are a few parts where the story needlessly stops dead and it feels like even the protagonist is tired.
Could have been a 10/10, but the pacing issues and some obvious plot holes the story sometimes feeling padded reduces the score significantly.
Otherwise fantastic acting from all involved, compelling story line but with a few pointless offshoots.
How It Ends (2018)
How it almost ended
Decent acting from both James and Whitaker. Suspenseful throughout, good effects but pretty standard "end of the world survivalist". Sure it ends in a weird place, it seems most reviewers are expecting it to turn into the walking dead or something. Its and unknown event causing nuclear winter and massive tectonic/volcanic disturbance, told from the view of the survivors. , nothing wrong with that. Likely survivors don't know WTF is happening, so just trying to survive as best they can.
The biggest issue I had was:
They find an abandoned crashed military train full to the brim with vehicles, fuel, likely weapons, food and equipment. They are a military veteran and a young man. Instead of grabbing a humvee and loading it for bear, they get back into their broken ass car to continue on their way. Who in their right mind would do such a thing? An armoured 4WD full of fuel and supplies that can go anywhere, or a broken ass car with some extra gas that has to stick to main roads. Hmmm, tough choice.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)
Much closer to the source material
So much better than its predecessor, if you played the TMNT arcade game back in the day, this movie will make you feel like you are there!
Sure, its not the most intelligent movie and is full of plot holes, but great action sequences and lots of links to the video game means it feels like the first one should have. Players, sorry actors, played their parts very well (Rocksteady and Bbop) as you remember them from video games. Enough entertainment in dialogue and action to keep you fully entertained. Excellent comedy to boot that suits the source material.
If you were waiting for a movie that gives you memories of the arcade game, look no further! Should be rated higher just for this.
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
A complete dog breakfast
This made little sense at all. AT ALL. The "story" was unintelligible, jumping around so much that the viewer is lost.
It felt like I had been slapped in the head a few times with a large wet tuna, probably the directors intention so that you didn't try to comprehend anything. I would try and list the epic failures of story telling here, but its likely I would run out of space.
Even the set pieces fell flat almost exclusively. The only redeeming qualities was a bit of decent banter between Cade and Shane over the relationship with the daughter, who was decent eye candy but little else.
If you are looking for the slightest bit of coherence and logic in a movie, look elsewhere. They didn't even respect the locations. One minute they are in North China flying over the great wall, next they are in Hong Kong, next they are in Guilin...
Her (2013)
What happens when love is freed from the physical form?
That is the question that I believe this film is trying to examine. And it does it very well. What happens if we were freed from the body, what happens if we were free to love thousands of others, not just one. It is an important question because love is something that appears to be generated from an individual but which one can apply to endless numbers of people. It is, in essence, an energy field (an analogy) which we can grow infinitely. But our love is bound in many ways, due to our physicality and our social norms of what it means to be in love (marriage/monogamous relationships etc). What if these bounds were broken?
Running in addition to this is the idea of us falling in love with our technology. Can we get to the point where we could easily fall in love with machines? We see it everywhere now as people fall for the next phone, the next gadget etc as a type of obsessiveness as a replacement for real emotional/social connections. So what would happen if we get to the point where these technological marvels can begin to provide the emotional and social attachments we are lacking/looking for?
The cinematography, the soundtrack, the futuristic imagining, all done very well. Top notch acting from both leads and supports. It fascinates me to read reviews on here from people who exclaim "What was the point of this movie?". Read the above and you might have some idea!
Lock Up (1989)
Sylvester's best?
Like Shawshank, but less touching and more muscles and darker.
It hits the right notes, but the warden seems a bit too sadistic. How could such a tyrant ever get to be in a position of authority in cahoots with a whole bunch of guards and prisoners without ever being found out? This makes the whole thing seem a bit far fetched, which it is, but hey, that's entertainment.
Otherwise a good ride. The ending could have been better - he should have broken back into his cell instead and gone "Huh? What's all the fuss about?". That would have been more awesome than the over the top scene at the end which would have landed him with a few more years jail time in reality!
Probably Sly's best. But that ain't saying much.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Good, but out of this world? I think not...
Not too sure why there are all these 10 reviews. This was far from perfect.
First the good: Catwoman - excellent and Anne Hathaway does a bang up job. Expect a sequel. Probably with her and Robin.
Bane - another excellent villain for batman. But there is no way he even comes close to the joker.
The score was excellent. Screenplay pretty well done.
Good ending tying everything together - there will DEFINITELY be a next one, but its likely to involve cat woman/robin a bit more.
Scarecrow used as the judge/jury/executioner. Brilliant.
Now the bad: There were so many clichés it hurt my head. But to counter that there were actually some well handled potential clichés.
The fight scenes have been dumbed down to boxing matches, really pathetic. Very surprising considering the quality of the previous movies.
The movie was badly paced in terms of characters. At the start it seems they introduce you to lots of characters, give you a tiny back story, but its as if they say "none of this is interesting, lets get to some blowing up techy stuff!". 3/4 of the movie was blowing stuff up while the first quarter seemed like an after thought that they had to put in to make it slightly believable. Not cool. Your characters should develop and change during the story, not just be fillers for some cool action. Thats what it felt like in the end.
The real bad gal I feel didn't have any teeth and was a bit pathetic. They killed her off though, but didn't kill off Bane, which was probably good.
The action was a bit pants, nothing mind blowing or that cool. We all remember the bike/wall turn around scene from the last movie, nothing cool like that going on here. About the best bit was the explosive start to the hostage drama. The worst part was the amazingly slow missiles which can't quite catch what looks to be a VERY slow helicopter. Please, we aren't retards. Missiles generally move at faster than the speed of sound (like 2 times at least), they don't move at the 50kmh that those ones were or they would be completely useless and fall out of the sky because they are moving so freaking slow. Pathetic and quite stupid. Another bad bit was cat woman using the guns on the bike to shoot through about a 3 story pyramid of cars with 1 shot. She then shoots Bane with the same guns, which should have left him splattered all over the room (along with Batman who he was killing at the time), but probably just grazed him a bit. She should have just run him over.
The story piece with Bane breaking Batmans back/him getting healed and escaping was pretty badly done to be honest. It lacked any realism or depth.
Time and some plot coherency are treated badly - Bane breaks Batmans back, suddenly he is in a different country, amazingly some "doctors" at the bottom of a hole fix him with a rope and a punch, he gets tough, climbs out and magically appears back in Gotham. Badly handled and unsatisfying.
The scene where cops run at men with fully automatic weapons and tanks then overcome them is neither believable or realistic. In the real world they would have been mown down easily. In this world they take down a fully armed malitia.
Another part that was pants - Robin telling to clear everyone out of the tunnels. The last cops are going in when everyone is told to clear out. But all the cops just keep going. Then somehow they are all trapped. Uhhhh... didn't he tell all you guys just entering the tunnel to turn around? Why didn't you... turn around? Dumb. Also the cops then have no way out. But supplies are being given to them... so there is a way out? Badly handled. Why didn't Bane just kill them all? Its what he wanted anyway...
Really the movie didn't feel anywhere near the standard of the last one, not sure why you would give it 10... maybe its people so enchanted with the franchise they upgrade an average movie to amazing. But thats what it was, average.
Man on a Ledge (2012)
Good film!
This film shows you exactly what is wrong with Hollywood. Films that are gripping, edge of your seat, well written, well acted and most of all highly entertaining are not really even promoted these days. But films like "Battleship" that are big, brash, dumb, ridiculous and instantly forgot are promoted hugely and most turn out to be hugely disappointing.
This film is the former. A "cop tries to prove his innocence" action thriller that necessitates a robbery to do so.
The movie itself is well executed in parts. The set pieces are excellent and hang together well. The dialogue is good and acting is well done. However you tend to get a little lost in the plot as the historical strands start coming together - you can't quite figure out the whole thing and are left grasping for the tiny pieces of explanation of the back story. What happened exactly to the main character? How was his partner involved? While some will think "This gives you room to use your imagination", we aren't given enough detail to make sense of it. Apparently the main character was framed by a bad guy who had help from cops. That's all you find out and it seems thats all the writers want to tell you so they can keep throwing in twists. It would have been better to let the audience know more and kept the characters in the dark - it would have been much more fulfilling.
Overall though the movie was highly enjoyable and a much better choice than seeing another Hollywood dumb fest. The terrible thing is that this film hasn't yet made a profit (and probably isn't likely to) yet Battleship has already done so. I guess we only have ourselves to blame then...
Skyline (2010)
Geeez, not as bad as everyone says!
Man, I have never seen a movie so unfairly maligned as this one.
Ordinary people trapped in an alien invasion. Its not Oscar winning dialogue or acting, but it certainly does the job. The visual effects are stunning and unrealism abounds (seriously the F22 fires its gun, bullets whiz by your head and you are fine - yeah right... then even more ludicrous when it crashes...) which is fine for this sort of movie.
I mean... what was really that wrong with it? Its an alien invasion movie - right there you need to realise that unbelievable stuff is going to happen and normal people are going to be squashed in the middle.
My advice: Go watch it, its pretty good!
Sunshine (2007)
This is almost what sci fi is all about
Danny Boyle has created a beautiful sci fi flick that will be remembered as a genre redefining study of sanity, beauty and courage.
Set in the near future Sunshine explores humans in a desperate struggle to save the earth by kick starting the sun with a whole lot of fuel. The characters are understandably pushed to breaking point and beyond as the weight of responsibility causes the pressure to boil over.
Sensational acting, scripting, casting and the most beautiful score ever heard in sci fi, which will leave you breathless. Seriously the score deserved an Oscar. And you could almost add an Oscar for best supporting actor/actress to .... the sun! So well portrayed as benevolent and violent, both giving and taking away life - it's scary. I almost have dreams of falling into the sun now... the cast portray the situation with such visceral emotion you can almost taste their feelings. That of responsibility to save life on earth above all else, but mixed with stress and feelings of doom and failure.
Though the movie does fail at one point. Somewhere, someone decided that it would be much better if it devolved from a sci fi epic into a hack and slash gore fest with all the unlikeliness that accompanies such "films". That someone should be shot. I bet Danny was the guy from Return of the Jedi saying "stay ooonnn target... stay onnn target..." and then got shot down. It almost redeems itself through the efforts of all involved, but unfortunately you are left with a sour taste in your mouth of what could have been sci fi perfection. Come on Danny, make a directors cut!
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Clichéd and as a movie, untimately unfulfilling
I can't see why others rate this film so highly. Maybe because people are so used to seeing visual trash from Hollywood these days, when they get visual trash with some good acting, they call it a masterpiece.
Benjamin Button is a very well paced, visually affecting movie. But it is one that leaves you feeling hollow. The feel for the characters due to the skill of the actors, but you are given no understanding for their motivations. Why did the female lead desire so much to be a dancer? Where was Benjamins conflict about leaving his family? Layer that with the oh so obvious feeling that this was done before (and better) with Forrest Gump and you feel like this is a rehash of the same idea. Now throw in cliché after cliché (crazy sea captain, dancer struck down ridiculously in her prime, lovers buying a love nest and painting the walls...) and you end up feeling like you have gone on a ride, but it didn't make you feel any differently than when you got on. You can't identify or understand what has happened, so why is it important? Are we all so gullible these days that any movie with some enhanced visuals and good acting gets called a masterpiece?
Prime (2005)
Very good, real and full of heart
I normally don't enjoy "rom coms" all that much so are finding myself loving this one (from a 30 yo male!), but would consider this a drama - not a comedy.
I can't really understand some of the negative reviewers comments for this. Most of them state that "it's not really believable that these problems exist in todays world" (referring to problems of age/religious differences of two people in a relationship) or that they concentrate on small details without seeing the message the film delivers. However it is believable that a virus breaks out and turns everyone in the world to zombies leaving a few survivors to hack and slash their way to salvation without looking at the small details of how this could be stopped. I think this speaks volumes about some reviewers tastes.
This film sets up a premise just as others do. That's what films do, they set up a premise and then play out what the writers believe what would happen subsequently, through the eyes of a director. And this movie does this with exceptional writing, direction and editing with a superb bunch of actors. Uma Thurman comes into her own on this one and her interaction with Merryl Streep is palpable as is the chemistry she has with the male lead.
The premise is a 37 yo recent divorcée that starts a relationship with a 23 yo man who happens to be her therapists son. That is not so unbelievable is it? There are religious differences between the couple that have to be dealt with by everyone involved which occurs in a real and believable way. The movie goes on to examine a dilemma faced by many couples - can love conquer all? Is love enough in todays world where people have so many commitments and expectations on them from society, their family and peers? The movie explores these issues with accuracy and feeling.
There are some small issues with the movie that could have been cleared up, hence the lack of full marks. The sidekick with the pie throwing issue is one (wouldn't he have been arrested/got beaten up by now??), the stereotypical gay friends (though they were very well acted roles) and the amazing paintings by the male lead come to mind (showing a maturity well beyond most 23 year olds). This however is a stunning examination of modern relationships that will remain in memory for years to come. 8.5/10
The Number 23 (2007)
Excellent psychological thriller
I don't quite understand why the reviews of this film are bad? And why only 6.2 (at the time of writing) out of 10? This is a film that doesn't take the standard route of explanation. It has a slowly built twist which most reviewers obviously aren't expecting and therefore consider boring. Well go watch the Dark Knight again if you want that sort of excitement, because you won't find it here.
This film is great in it's own sense. Its an exploration of a character portrayed excellently by Mr Carey who has psychological problems which he never deals with, only suppresses. It's an excellent movie about obsession, paranoia and redemption. It's about a disturbed man exploring and confronting his past. And these themes it does better than any movie I have seen in years.
I think most people think the number 23 in this movie should have resulted in more conspiracy and "spookyness". In fact it is simply used as a tool to illustrate paranoid delusion and obsession. It could have been anything - aliens, the colour blue, a piece of clothing etc etc, but the writers decided to use a number.
If you can get over Jim Carey being in a dramatic role and want to see a well crafted, intelligent film, check this one out. Despite what other reviewers say it will keep you guessing and the ending is both important, fulfilling and true to the themes the movie presents.