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knuddelholic
Reviews
Drain the Oceans (2018)
History Channel would had been proud...
Looks like National Geographic sank like the History channel (HC) straight to the bottom of the sea with this luridness botch of infotainment, emphasis VERY heavily on the latter.
This is no documentary but a cheap way to rewrite history by turning into a revolting peace of actiontainment.
Many information was twisted for sensational purposes,
After HC sank itself in the 90s with UFO and other junk it seemed like NC was resisting the trend of turning history into action junk food of cheapest propaganda level.
Such artistic liberties can be taken in entertainment pieces but the have nothing at all to do in history reports.
The 'BEHOLD, our mighty technology' echo was just the additional broomstick to the producers backside.
Do yourself a favor and watch something else as this is not worth any second of your life.
But after this experience I added NC 'documentaries' to the junk pile of history like HC. If I could I would add the 'bell of shame' meme here.
The Lion King (2019)
Quite a pleasant surprise
I grew up with Disney movies like so many others. But as the studio went through ground shaking changes in the 90s its animation department.
With Lion King and Aladdin their movies turned to adult movies even they were marketed as 'family' movies.
The original LK blew me absolutely away with Hans Zimmer's amazing soundtrack work. But the character designs and jokes were making me cringe that I just couldn't watch the movie again with the tacky royal theme, the nazi hyena and others.
The new version feels much more mature and toned down all tacky, tasteless jokes and themes which made this quite a surprise as I gave upon Disney animations since 1991 and TV productions since Gargoyles.
I watched also the Pinocchio remake which was also cringe worthy. So I thought I give one more remake a try with LK and was utterly, pleasantly surprise. Maybe I try one more remake to see if LK was just a fluke as most remakes are most of the time not that good.
At least the new version helped me to erase the old cringe fest even the '94 soundtrack will stay a timeless masterpiece.
If people claim this movie has no emotion then they are too used to have hyper-inflated, on cue Disney emotion spoon-fed to them their whole life instead of listening to their own hearts.
Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan (2021)
Nice series but annoying cuts back and forth
As much as I love the topic being touched by this series in quite some detail. What made it quite annoying to watch was this endless cutting back and forth between the scenes in Japan and the close up faces of the historians which broke the flow and the focus for me.
I was hoping it would improve over time but it didn't. I guess these days every reporter and commentator has to be turned into a 'star' by getting their faces all the time in your eyes instead of using at least most of the time some off-voice without showing every single time their faces.
Despite that nuisance, the series is still worth seeing as it gives a pretty good overview over the period after all.
Aftermath (2017)
A BIG problem in modern society
This movie touches a point which bothers me for many, many years. How our modern, capitalistic society does not just reduce everything to a matter of legal and financial aspects but which also pushed an important wedge between people on a social level.
Unfortunately I can talk of own experience how I almost caused a serious accident which had not just caused my own but other people's death on the road but luckily just ended with a shock and a harmless fender bender for everybody.
As I watched that movie this all came back to the surface and let me feel for Jake as well as for Roman. Life changing events which get carved into our memories and which we have to learn to live with.
But in our modern society which gets ruled by money and insurances in such events what got lost through that culture is the human element. We get told not to talk with the other side of an accident and not say 'I am sorry. I am deeply sorry for this.' as the insurance is the inhumane element of modern society which we paid with a very high price. The price of finding emotional closure by having a chance to say we are sorry and that we can maybe find over time also the chance to forgive each other after we had a chance for some personal encounter with both parties.
The inability we got indoctrinated by the insurance system to not say sorry because it's a legal guilt admission contributed to the inhumane element of our capitalistic dictated society.
Also the inability of saying 'please' and 'thank you' with both expressions are not just empty shells but truly meant, coming from the heart are the price we paid for the path insurance policies pushed society in without many people really realizing what we lost from our humanity and closing our hearts from each other by being not allowed by those rules to engage on a humane level.
I think this movie shows where this can easily lead to. Deep bitterness we can't work out expect with 'specialists' which are paid to do this as their job instead of having such experts helping us to communicate with both sides If they want that chance after the first grief over the events.
The key scene with the lawyers made the aim for the movie in particular clear how everything is reduced to business, reporters just try to get a story and move on to the next drama, how society is left quite alone and then the stress of courts and/or lawyer firms slugging out their deal and present them to the suffering individuals as what it is for them, just a job and giving a damn as they burned out long time ago and hard cold ass to protect themselves emotionally, IF they ever had a heart in the first place as they began in that career of suffering.
It was nice to see a movie who dragged this perverted system and how it works into the light and how festering bitterness can lead to counter violence and to a new spiral of violence until someone can muster enough strength to break that terrible spirale.
A big thanks to Arnold for being in such a movie to drag some attention to this problem of modern society as a hurt human being left alone and not as a bad ass as the world likes him.
Medal of Honor (2018)
Honarable man, befouled by turning this into a propaganda tool
In general an interesting series idea but the presentation leaves a foul after taste in the mouth how many commentators in the episodes flog those actions to death with too much pathos.
Another point which felt quite weird was how the whole presentation was torn apart with the episode credits waaay too early and cutting the episodes pretty much in half like producing company 'Allentown Productions' felt those episodes more of a chore then a honor. The ceremony recordings were more touching and important then the on action focused re-enactment of the battle events.
Focusing on the action and delivering the ceremonies after the credits ruins to a big degree those actions of the recipients and belittles their actions by turning this into an action show instead focusing more on what kind of people they were and how they became those who made those often impulsive decisions which luckily led to a heroic outcome for them and their brother-in-arms.
I salute to the recipients and their families who helped them to make them those precious people but I distance myself of the presentation how this was handled by the production company.
Another Life (2019)
Surprising change to the better half way
Ok, no spoilers here, I just keep it in a nutshell.
The story is actually better then I thought and it really finishes with a good Cliffhanger.
The big point this series gets heavily bashed for by most reviews is about the ship crew which, I got to admit, let me also cringe at many times in the first half of the season 1. But after I took a glance over the reviews here and some recommended to stay with it I got pleasantly surprised in the second half of the season 1.
The quick focus on the mission in space is not really an issue as the story keeps jumping back and forth between past events on Earth and the ship as it is quite often used these days.
Yes, the crew is incredible annoying and hard to swallow at the beginning and it takes some time were you keep thinking 'please let character X die' as they slooowly mature with a few relapses here and there. But in general I was pleasantly surprised at the end and now I wait for the 2nd season as the Kindergarten is over and a lot is on the line.
The story is overall no timeless classic but refreshing different from SF shows were Earth is one of many and established space faring races were here it is quite new to deep space and trying to improvise as they go on the trip to stay alive. Yes, I would call is a space opera of smaller scale as there is no Federation or whole fleets as backup but this one ship which struggles to survive.
It's sad to see that it took the director some time (half the season) to find their groove with the pacing and ESPECIALLY with the casting before the pieces fall into place but hey, I still remember how wooden TNG began and they also needed some time to get their act together and find their own groove.
I recommend the show despite the cringing and annoyingly super young crew where I thought 'Who the heck put this pile of members together?' as they were way too emotional unstable and juvenile to make this believable.
It's just the acting at the beginning which let me wonder 'Am I watching a SYFY original?' as their movies are often have decent to good ideas but the acting is waaaay sub-standard. But the effects are decent and better the those SYFY trash standards, that's for sure.
Take some Valium for the first episodes and have fun when things start moving and the plot gets thick. Damn...the waiting for the next season will be torture after that Cliffhangar, but it let me forget the lame take off. :)
Roma (2018)
The movie had made Akira Kurosawa proud
Wow, I never thought I would see a movie with that cinematography again, that slow pacing like from an observer. No hectic of modern movies, no dramaturgy for the sake of pushing a plot.
The camera acts just like an observer to watch the lives of the spectators, the up and downs in their lives like a documentary without a narrator.
The last time I saw such simplistic but refreshing camera work was from movies from Akira Kurosawa, especially in the post war Japan.
This kind of slice of life story telling got really rare these days, especially since the internet age were everything got accelerated and feels pushed, forced.
To appreciate this movie you do need empathy and patience and not expect to be entertained in any way. You go on a ride with Cleo and the household she lives and works in and that's it, period.
I felt with her all the time and felt almost sad as the credits started to roll as she and the household grew on me during the movie.
If you have trouble with the pacing of the movie, try to see it in chunks. But I think it is worth watching it. It was delightful to find such a movie like this as I do miss Kurosava very much and find that Alfonso Cuarón would make Kurosave proud with the quite similar style.
I look forward to see more from Sr. Cuarón.
Alien Warfare (2019)
Completely wrongly advertised
I just skimmed the reviews and saw the heavy flak it got.
Yes, it is LOW budget, cheesy and tacky.
I let the flick run anyway as I had to do some chores and was actually surprised with the disconnection about how this movie got marketed completely wrong as action movie and a title which didn't helped either to sell it as what it much more was, a comedy with aliens in the story.
Well, I got my entertainment out of the flick and will never see it again as it was not THAT good. But the silly acting and dialog's made the chore work move more easy.
It's definitely no classic in any sense, but the one star reviews are doing it injustice IF you forget about action and instead can draw some fun from the crazy navy seal team which reminded me a bit of the 'Police Academy' and the humor had that kind of narrow and harmless level of silly humor like the old PA franchise.
I think who deserves a one star review is the marketing team which tagged this comedy and let people believe in an action movie thanks to title and the action tag.
IF you like 'Police Academy' like humor levels you will get something out of this movie. If you get easily offended of fun being poked on a navy team then yes, avoid it.
Btw...interesting plot twist ending. ;)
Tank 432 (2015)
Just don't watch this junk
Even a single star is still too much for this PoS.
Not that I mind low budget movies. But this trash doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Plays obviously in England.
Mercs dragging two suspects in orange prison suits around for never disclosed reason.
No traces of any conflict, but the mercs find an obviously old, abandoned troop carrier tank on a huge grass field.
They stumble during the movie of patches of an orange powder, probably a toxic weapon which makes them hallucinate
The leader keeps making notes of meds the field doctor injects but doesn't know why.
Trapped mercs find in the tank med files of the whole team and marked all as diseased. Why or where they come from? Nobody knows.
Finally ends in people killing eachother inside the tank trap. One person climbs out and disappears out of plot.
The last survivor sees a team in hazmat suits approaching the tank. They see him trapped inside and roast the tank with a flamethrower to kill him as well.
The end...
It seems like Nick Gillespie was on a LSD trip of some sort as he wrote this script. The budget of this PoS production is completely wasted and viewers are robbed of 90 minutes of their lives.
Lesson? Never watching a movie again without making first some basic homework online.
Send Nick Gillespie a whole tank full of golden raspberries.
Peter Rabbit (2018)
Beatrix Potter would turn in her grave
The movie is technically as all animations these days of a excellent quality. But that's where it already ends dead in the tracks.
The characters and scripts are totally Americanized trash and just have with the original not much in common. The typical constant caffeinated characters on a sugar high (except for the few, short thoughtful moments), the same trashy cliches like in every US cartoon complete with society 'values'.
What a total waste of money this production is. I recommend the classic movie from 1971 and no, I am not British.
But all imported animation ideas got butchered in the US as they got localized for the home, ingrown market with a very few exceptions. *sighs sadly*
The Man Who Saved the World (2014)
A human being
I do remember the year very well with the Korean 747 being shot down, the dangerous rhetoric from Reagan and the dehumanizing, propaganda words of the 'evil empire' and how tense the cold war around that time. I lived back then in Europe with the arms race between SS-20 and the Pershing 2 missiles.
It is very hard today to visualize how dangerously close we were all back then to the end as militant elements on both sides were quite trigger happy thanks to the propaganda machinery of both systems.
This movie is luckily not another brainless action movie. It is a very simple movie which just shows a simple human being with his own worries, his personal sufferings and fates who holds his ground in a world were many are programmed to take the easy path, to dodge responsibility by doing blindly which is expected from a cog in a machinery, to swim with the masses instead of holding in, remain calm and use his mind but also his heart and not let the surrounding crowd wash you away in the panicking mob mentality.
It was later known that the system was not wrong, but it was new, untested like so many things which got rushed into service on both sides.
The warnings got triggered by very high altitude clouds which reflected sunlight in a pretty tiny time window at the Western part of the US which were in its early morning hours and the sun was just in the right ankle to confuse the radar system.
Today such information is confirmed by geostationary satellites to confirm or unconfirm such data.
But in hindsight we are all smarter and let often arrogance blind us how this or that could possibly happen because we are simply unable to put ourselves into the Zeitgeist of the situation and existing shortcomings because of lack of practical experience colliding with programed fear and panic making us blind for rational thought.
I read but I can't confirm that detail that Mr. Petrov back then in the bunker also rationalized his decision that a first strike with just a few missiles didn't made any sense. The knowledge that a first strike would have been more massive and that brand new systems have their kinks and even computer can be wrong when fed incomplete information helped him to hold his ground despite the immense pressure.
I agree with Stanislav Petrov. He was no hero. No hero in the common definition of our modern society. His 'heroism' was his humanistic personality, one who kept his calm and resisted the peer pressure from his immediate surrounding but also the distant one in media, keeping centered and stayed through his life a human being which didn't stopped to evolve and jump over his own shadow by also finding the strength to make peace with his mother as well, showing indeed great inner strength despite the decades of hate and anger and despite all the prodding he had from the lady as she reflected his own words she learned from him on his tour through the U.S., reminding him that he had nothing else to loose as he was, like we all, his own worst enemy. And he challenged it and overcame himself once more.
A most inspiring person and movie. And like he said, just at the right time at the right spot.
I certainly hope that there will be others like him on this world who have the guts to stand up against all outside pressure and focus on trying to do the right thing at the right time before our planet runs eventually out of luck.
Thank you very sincerely Mr. Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov and to all past and future unknown heroes which will help(ed) saving our planet.
The Rock (1996)
swinging back and forth between silly action and serious plot
When I read through all this former comments then I see a lot of hip, hip hooray on all the manly behavior and the heroic stuff from the soldiers and how more or less realistic it was. I don't want to go into this part too much as I just find it way overrated. All in all is this movie an entertaining action flick. But the movie gets definitely saved from the good actors and not the action scenes that were sometimes just quite ridiculous. The writer of this action scenes and the script writer for them should better write silly stories like Indiana Jones as many were as unrealistic as those of the Indy movies.
Some of the car scenes tried a bit too hard to be cool that they appeared instead silly and ruined the serious mood of the story (e.g. the cable car which was flying like the Bus from Speed like someone placed a huge charge under it.). Another quite silly thing was the whole Dungeon&Dragons like construction, which was supposed to be under Alcatraz. That reminded me from the first moment more of Temple of Doom of the Indy series and again was quite contra productive for the serious plot.
Amazing how much activity in form of active leaking gas pipes (or whatever those flamethrowers were) and moving machinery there was under a building complex, which is supposed to be out of order. An old, complex maze combined with a bunch of booby traps from Ed's man had became that part of the movie much better as this extreme cheap excuse for the ex-con Connery to be back in that prison.
That all gave sometimes the impression like the director didn't know if he wanted to make a tense thriller or just a fast paced action flick with A-Team or Indy qualities. Maybe the writers for the excellent plot and the action scenes should have talked more with each other.
Personally I had preferred less silly action scenes and action sets and the movie had reached easily much better qualities like "Crimson Tide".
But the actors really save the day in many ways as they are much more believable as the described scenes. And the best of the movie is still Hans Zimmer's soundtrack which produces more atmosphere for the whole plot as the action scenes are, except the so often described shower room scene which was good. No wonder that this soundtrack was VERY often used for later trailers for all kinds of movies.
Without the described silly action scenes above would I give the movie maybe a 7 or 8 out of 10. But so the silly scenes cost something and reduce the movie to an action flick, which is barely above the average as it does swing too often between lighthearted and serious atmosphere. So I say 5.5 out of 10. That plot idea deserved a better action scriptwriter.
Ikiru (1952)
A timeless classic about values and meaning of life
All right, I have to confess in advance that I might be called prejudice as I think that Akira Kurosawa is one of the great moviemakers ever as he is an artist.
Maybe eccentric in some ways but making movies in a special way which you find today not much more, simple and clear, letting the viewer concentrate on the psyche and character of his movie characters without splitting them up in good and bad like light entertaining movies from Hollywood. This movie is another good example of giving us a view into different personalities and their different ways how to deal with life and death.
The movie does leave it, like most Akira movies, to the viewer to make our own decision about the characters and their actions. Showing us like in different mirrors the light and shadow sides of our all psyche which we have in us and which we often prefer to deny even from ourselves.
Ikiru makes this even clearer as it plays in a modern society instead of the old feudal Japan, which is too distant to most viewers.
But the problems showed in the movie and the good and bad traits we can see in this movie are timeless as they show the whole facets of human emotions and traits and how we can grow beyond ourselves when we get confronted with certain situations. Showing without a lifted finger how a single individual can touch the life of others and set a shining example for bravery and determination.
And like so many other movies of Akira does also Ikiru leaves the viewer behind with stirred-up emotions, making us once more clear to what positive or negative actions human beings are able to, leaving us with shame and pride at the same time and open the mind for asking ourselves what we often did good and bad in our life and how this decisions affected others.
I can just highly recommend watching this movie and showing it also to teenagers to give them something to ponder about.